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Brief Lives

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Stephen C. Small looks at the life of one of philosophy’s rebel heroes.

Albert Camus was born into poverty in Mondovi, Algeria, on November 7, 1913. He was raised as a slum kid by his mother, an illiterate charwoman. The family subsisted in a cramped three-room apartment. His father, a wine-shipping clerk turned army reservist, died of wounds suffered during World War I, thereby exacerbating the family’s economic plight.

Such an unpromising start might have stunted the ambitions of a lesser person.

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