Camus' books are largely ignored in Algerian schools

Camus was born in Algeria, but was considered French

French Algeria was segregated between Arabs and "pieds-noirs," which was then a derogatory name for the million-plus Europeans living in the North African country. Camus was one of the latter, and throughout his life, he argued for political rights for Arabs while also believing the country should remain part of France. Pieds-noirs largely fled the country after it gained independence in 1962.

Camus grew up in poverty

Albert Camus' father died when he was less than a year old, leaving his mother, a cleaning woman, and his grandmother to raise him in a poor neighborhood of Belcourt (now Belouizdad). It was an experience he'd reflect on in his unfinished autobiographical novel, "The First Man."

Camus won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957 for his philosophical essays and fiction

The philosopher and novelist was one of the youngest writers to win the award, at just 44. In his acceptance speech, he spoke on the role of an artist in a world that seemed increasingly bleak. "Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world," he said. "Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself."

Camus was once a communist, but eventually disavowed the ideology

The writer belonged to the French Communist Party and the Algerian Communist Party in the mid-1930s, but he was eventually expelled for refusing to downplay objections to French colonialism. By the time he published "The Rebel," he was vocally anti-communist, believing it was a utopian ideology that often relied on violence.

Camus credited a teacher with his success

After winning the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957, Camus wrote a letter to Louis Germain, his former teacher, thanking the man for "the affectionate hand" he extended to Camus as a student. In the short note, he'd go on to write, "without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened."

A 2015 Algerian novel reconsiders Camus' 'The Stranger'

Kamel Daoud's "The Meursault Investigation" exists in the same universe as Camus' famous novel, but it expands the world to imagine the story from the Arab Algerian perspective, showing the impact its main character's actions had on real people. Rather than focusing on the existential awakening of one man, it considers the longtail impact of colonialism in Algeria.

Camus contracted tuberculosis as a teenager

There was still little understanding of treatment for the disease at the time; for most people, a tuberculosis diagnosis was a death sentence. The 17-year-old Camus was quarantined in his uncle's house, where he grew into an avid reader. Scholars note that the experience would inform his later work, including his 1947 novel "The Plague."

Kamel Daoud's 'The Meursault Investigation' earned him a fatwa

Although the novel was read by many as a criticism of Camus' "The Stranger" and French colonialism in Algeria, it was also read by some as blasphemous. In December 2014, a member of the Islamic Awakening Front, a militant Islamist group, said the book "placed the Koran in doubt, along with the sanctity of Islam" and called for Daoud's execution.

A Camus scholar believes 'The Stranger' is often misread as a role model

The writer and philosopher Jonathan Rée notes that part of the reason why the book was so popular was that it was an easy pick for students learning French to translate. What's often lost in translation, though, is that the book's narrator, Meursault, who murders a man, is not intended to be a role model.

Camus died in a car crash, which some believe was orchestrated by the KGB

Albert Camus died in 1960, at the age of 46, after his publisher's car crashed into a tree. Italian author Giovanni Catelli, however, alleges that what appeared to be an accident was actually an assassination by the Soviet spy agency as a way to silence the French writer's anti-Soviet beliefs.

Camus was a soccer goalie as a teenager

The writer played for Algiers Racing University but had to quit after contracting tuberculosis. He remained a fan, though, once suggesting that the game taught him important lessons about morality. In the 1957 interview below, he briefly reflects on his time as a goalie and speaks about his recent Nobel Prize.

Read Albert Camus' 'Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays'

Camus' most famous work of nonfiction is this collection of philosophical essays. Perhaps the most resonant entry is the title essay, which reimagines the Greek myth of a man condemned to roll a boulder for all eternity. Rather than presenting the story as a cautionary tale about defying the gods, as the original myth intended, Camus considered Sisyphus an "absurd hero" for his actions and imagined him smiling as he endlessly toiled at his repetitive punishment.

Camus edited an underground newspaper during World War II

The paper, called "Combat," was aligned with the French Resistance fighting against the Nazi occupation. Like his fiction, his journalism was clear-eyed: When Hiroshima and Nagaski were bombed, he criticized the many writers impressed with the destruction, writing, "our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level of savagery."

Camus directed a Picasso-penned play

The show, called "Desire Caught by the Tail," was written by Picasso in 1941 while living in Nazi-occupied Paris. It was first staged in 1944, featuring several French intellectuals, including Albert Camus, who directed, as well as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, who had starring roles.

Camus was influenced by American culture, especially literature and jazz

He loved the work of writers like William Faulker and Ernest Hemingway, and loved drinking whiskey and listening to jazz. He also admired the actor Humphrey Bogart and his striking performance in the noir classic "The Big Sleep." He was delighted when his wife gave him a Burberry raincoat, thinking it made him look more like Bogart.

Camus and Sartre admired each other's work before becoming friends

The two writers, who would later be considered two of the biggest names associated with existentialism, wrote positive reviews of each others' early work, with Camus praising Sartre's novel "Nausea" and story collection "The Wall" and, later, Sartre favorably compared Camus' "The Stranger" to Franz Kafka and Ernest Hemingway. Still, their reviews included some critiques, hinting at the larger disagreements that would come much later.

Inside 'Blood Meridian' author Cormac McCarthy's library of 20,000 books

The reclusive writer published 12 novels and taught himself stonemasonry and quantum physics, among myriad other skills and subjects. Since he died in 2023, scholars have been mining his personal library for lessons on his influences, interests, and more.

King's books are now taught by college professors

Stephen King’s horror, fantasy, and science fiction were once considered lowbrow and unworthy of serious academic study. That's changed over the last 50 years, with King courses and symposiums taking place at universities around the world.

Novelist Jean Toomer was uncomfortable with the term 'Negro writer'

Toomer's modernist novel "Cane" is, among critics, one of the great works of the Harlem Renaissance. Toomer, however, was uncomfortable with his work being labeled as "Negro," including in Alain Locke's movement-defining collection "The New Negro." He found the title both reductive and inaccurate: He was mixed-race, telling writer Claude McKay that he was "French, Dutch, Welsh, Negro, German, Jewish and Indian," and preferred to be considered "American."

'Fahrenheit 451' is a perennially banned dystopian story

This late-in-life interview with Ray Bradbury, author of “Fahrenheit 451,” details the book’s origins, providing background for one of the most popular titles in dystopian literature. As a book lover, Bradbury was horrified by the book burnings of Nazi Germany and imagined a version of the United States where firemen were censors, protecting their fellow citizens from literature’s harmful ideas. “We are a democracy of readers,” Bradbury explains. “And we should keep it that way.”

Jean-Jacques Lequeu was an amateur architect who dabbled with the surreal

Although he never found a career in architecture, Lequeu sketched hundreds of images in his free time. His innovative style wasn't discovered until after his death, but the dreamlike drawings have since been appreciated for their visionary quality.

France's first restaurant guide helped spread the concept across Europe and the US

"Almanach des Gourmandes" was published in 1804 and featured restaurant reviews and dining advice, articulating the burgeoning restaurant culture of 19th-century France. The publication helped spread the concept and its values across the map, leading to more formalized restaurants in other countries.

Scholars note that many Cassatt paintings are about women's labor

The women in her portraits are often performing domestic work, something that contemporary scholars consider a subtle protest of how women's labor was often overlooked during Cassatt's time. Fittingly, Cassatt often hired working-class women as models, ensuring the portraits were not only accurate but that the subjects were appropriately compensated.

Some believe 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' is a political allegory

Although Baum claimed his book was intended as a simple children's story, scholars challenged that notion. One high school history teacher, Henry Littlefield, began teaching the book as a satire of the Gilded Age and published an essay inspiring other scholars to consider the text as a politically charged allegory.

The Arab League has 22 members and very little enforcement power

It was founded in Cairo in 1945 and spans 22 nations across the Middle East and North Africa, ostensibly to coordinate policy on economics, culture, and defense. Its charter says any resolution only binds states that voted for them, rendering most of them toothless.

One of the most famous portraits ever taken is 'Afghan Girl' (1984) by Steve McCurry, yet the subject Sharbat Gula went much of her life without being identified or benefitting from the image's success.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Corals are themselves not coral reefs—the term refers to the tiny marine invertebrates that build the rigid reef.

Explore the archaeological treasures of Pompeii, the city buried under volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.