Piers Paul-Read

Post-war feuds and dilemmas

issue 04 February 2006

Albert Camus was an exceptional man who lived in interest- ing times. His parents were pieds-noirs — French settlers in Algeria. His father died at the battle of the Marne and he was raised by his mother, an illiterate cleaning lady. Encouraged by inspired teachers, he won scholarships to a lycée and then university in Algiers. He published his first book at the age of 24, and worked as a journalist, first in Algiers and later in Paris. At the outbreak of the second world war, ill-health exempted him from military service. He worked as a reader for Gallimard, and wrote a classic novel of existentialism, L’Etranger, and a philosophical essay, Le Mythe de Sisyphe. Both were published in 1942.

In the autumn of 1943, now aged 30, Camus joined the Resistance and wrote for the underground newsletter, Combat.

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