Albert Camus: 65 trivia about the Nobel Prize winner!

Albert Camus was a famous writer and philosopher, whose way of thinking influenced the whole world.

Albert Camus was famous for his radical way of thinking and his pessimistic texts. Let’s find out more about him!

1. Albert Camus was born on the 7th of November in 1913.
2. He was a French Algerian.
3. He was born in Algeria.
4. He was an author, a philosopher and a journalist.
5. His parents were French.
6. His mother could only hear with her one ear: the left one.
7. His father, Lucien Camus was a poor French-Algerian agricultural worker.
8. He died in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during World War I.
9. Camus never got to know him. 
10. He spent his childhood in a poor neighborhood in the colonial Algeria.
11. Camus, his mother and some of his relatives lived in Algeria without many of basic possessions a person needs to live decently.
12. He was a second-generation French immigrant to Algeria.
13. He was called pied-noir (‘black foot’- a slang term for French who were born in Alger, Algeria.
14. He was also a French citizen, something that was denied to the Arabs.
15. While he was a child he liked playing soccer and swimming.
16. Louis Germain his teacher influenced him so that Camus gained a scholarship in 1924 to continue his studies to a prestigious high school near Algiers.
17. In 1930 Camus was diagnosed with tuberculosis, so he moved with his uncle Gustave Acault, who was a butcher.
18. His uncle influenced him a lot.
19. It was at that time that Camus turned to philosophy, with the mentoring of his philosophy teacher Jean Grenier.
20. He was impressed by ancient Greek philosophers and Friedrich Nietzsche.
21. During that time, he was only able to study part-time.
22. In order to earn money, he took odd jobs: as a private tutor, car parts clerk, and assistant at the Meteorological Institute.
23. Later in 1933, he enrolled to study philosophy at the University of Algiers.
24. He graduated in 1936.
25. His thesis was about Plotinus
26. Camus also studied novelist-philosophers such as Stendhal, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Franz Kafka.
27. In 1934, aged 20, Camus was in a relationship with a drug addict named Simone Hié.
28. His uncle Gustave did not approve of the relationship.
29. Camus married Hié in order to help her fight her addiction.L
30. Later they divorced because he discovered she was in a relationship with her doctor at the same time
31. Camus joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in early 1935.
32. He was not a Marxist, but he wanted to fight against the inequalities that existed in Algeria.
33. In 1938, Camus began working for the leftist newspaper Alger républicain as he had strong anti-fascist feelings.
34. The rise of fascist regimes in Europe was worrying him.
35. By then, Camus had developed strong feelings against authoritative colonialism as he witnessed the harsh treatment of the Arabs and Berbers by French authorities.
36. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II.
37. He volunteered as a fighter.
38. He was not accepted due to his tuberculosis history.
39. Camus tried to flee but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed newspaper.
40. After the war, he was a celebrity figure and gave many lectures around the world.
41. He married two times.
42. Camus was a womanizer throughout his life.
43. He was part of the Left that opposed the Soviet Union because of its totalitarianism.
44. Camus was a moralist and was leaning towards anarcho-syndicalism.
45. He was part of many organizations seeking European integration.
46. During the Algerian War, he kept a neutral stance.
47. He wanted a multicultural and pluralistic Algeria.
48. This position caused controversy and was rejected by most parties.
49. Philosophically, Camus’s views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism.
50. Absurdism includes many things such as the theater of absurd whose founder was Eugene Ionesco.
51. He is also considered to be an existentialist.
52. He rejected this idea much time while he was alive.
53. In 1957, Camus received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
54. He believed that André Malraux would win the prestigious award.
55. At age 44, he was the second-youngest recipient of the prize, after Rudyard Kipling who was 42.
56. He adapted and directed for the stage Dostoyevsky’s novel Demons with the money he received from the Nobel Prize.
57. Camus died on 4 January 1960 at the age of 46, in a car accident near Sens.
58. His agent was driving the car.
59. There is a theory that KGB agents killed him because he was against the Soviet Union.
60. This theory is not proven.
61. There is a book about it though that is published in Italy, France, and Argentina.
62. He has a daughter.
63. Her name is Katherine Camus.
64. She is 74 years old since she was born in 1945.
65. She doesn’t approve of this theory and she believes that her father died in an accident.