Although often associated with existentialism, Camus rejected this label for his work and outlook. A journalist, philosopher and novelist, he won the Nobel Prize in 1957,

Coming from humble origins, Camus suffered a bout of tuberculosis in 1930, which put pay to his sporting activities and forced him to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle.

He joined the French Communist Party in 1935, seeing the ideology as a tool with which to fight injustice and carve out a more spiritual way of living in the world. After being denounced as a Trotskyite and expelled from the party, Camus went on to be associated with anarchism and his first contribution to philosophy was his idea of the Absurd.

A pacifist at the outbreak of World War II, Camus's experiences in Paris during the occupation turned him against the Germans and he became a staunch member of the editorial team behind the anti-Nazi journal Combat. He was one of the few French editors to oppose the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

Camus died in a car accident in 1960, making him the shortest-lived Nobel laureate to date.

Although often associated with existentialism, Camus rejected this label for his work and outlook. A journalist, philosopher and novelist, he won the Nobel Prize in 1957,

Coming from humble origins, Camus suffered a bout of tuberculosis in 1930, which put pay to his sporting activities and forced him to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle.

He joined the French Communist Party in 1935, seeing the ideology as a tool with which to fight injustice and carve out a more spiritual way of living in the world. After being denounced as a Trotskyite and expelled from the party, Camus went on to be associated with anarchism and his first contribution to philosophy was his idea of the Absurd.

A pacifist at the outbreak of World War II, Camus's experiences in Paris during the occupation turned him against the Germans and he became a staunch member of the editorial team behind the anti-Nazi journal Combat. He was one of the few French editors to oppose the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945.

Camus died in a car accident in 1960, making him the shortest-lived Nobel laureate to date.