Albert Camus’s short life began in Algiers in 1913 and ended in a car crash near Paris in 1960. After being rejected from the École Normale because of a failed medical assessment, Camus became a journalist in Algiers and planned his writing career around three concepts based on the figures of Sisyphus, Prometheus and Nemesis, a scheme that he never finished.
Jonathan Rée explains the ways in which Camus’s philosophy differed from that of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, with whom he’s often associated, and why his most famous novel, L’Étranger, has been so misunderstood in the English-speaking world.
This is an extract from the series 'Conversations in Philosophy' with Jonathan Rée and James Wood, part of the Close Readings podcast from the London Review of Books.
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