Albert Camus
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
Albert Camus was a French writer born into a poor family in Algeria, a journalist of the Resistance, a novelist, playwright and essayist, and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. He described the absurd as the clash between the human demand for meaning and a world that stays silent, rejected both suicide and the leap of faith, and then sought in revolt a value that sets limits on violence, against the political murders of his century.
How can we live lucidly in a world that gives no answer, without yielding to despair or consenting to murder?
The essentials
A life in dates
Biography- 1913Birth in Mondovi
- 1942The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus
- 1951–1952The Rebel and the break with Sartre
- 1957Nobel Prize in Literature
- 1960Death on the road
Works to begin with
BibliographyBiography
Albert Camus was a French writer born into a poor family in Algeria, a journalist of the Resistance, a novelist, playwright and essayist, and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. He described the absurd as the clash between the human demand for meaning and a world that stays silent, rejected both suicide and the leap of faith, and then sought in revolt a value that sets limits on violence, against the political murders of his century.
Philosophy
The absurd lies neither in the world nor in the mind alone but in their confrontation: the human longing for unity and clarity meets the unreasonable silence of the world. Camus treats it as a starting point to be kept in view, not as a conclusion.
Reading guides
Original introductions to enter the works, discover their central questions and take the reflection further.
Bibliography
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
Who came before, who came after.
Above the timeline, each solid arc marks a documented reading, back in time or forward; dotted arcs pair kindred questions.
Read and answered7
In dialogue1
Kindred questions1
A first reading.
Living with the absurd
Follow the essay from the question of suicide through the critique of philosophical leaps to the image of Sisyphus walking back down to his rock.
The Myth of SisyphusRevolt and its limits
Trace how a slave’s refusal becomes a value shared by all, and how revolutions that kill in the name of history betray that origin.
The RebelReading Meursault
Read the novel as a diptych, from the funeral and the beach to the trial and the last night, and ask what the court condemns in Meursault.
The StrangerLinked thinkers
- Read and answered
- In dialogue
- Kindred questions