Albert Camus Timeline

Camus joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in early 1935, drawn by its anti-fascist stance, beginning his engagement with radical politics of the era.

Image source: French Communist Party

In 1936, the independence-minded Algerian Communist Party (PCA) was founded, and Camus joined it after his mentor Grenier advised him to do so.

Image source: Algerian Communist Party

In 1944, he founded the Comité français pour la fédération européenne (CFFE), declaring that Europe 'can only evolve along the path of economic progress, democracy, and peace if the nation-states become a federation,' reflecting his world federalist convictions.

In 1945, following the Sétif and Guelma massacre after Arabs revolted against French mistreatment, Camus was one of only a few mainland journalists to visit the colony, reporting on conditions there.

Image source: Sétif and Guelma massacre

In 1947–48, he founded the Groupes de Liaison Internationale (GLI), a trade union movement in the context of revolutionary syndicalism, furthering his engagement with workers' movements.

The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced him at a meeting of the Cercle des Étudiants Anarchistes ('Anarchist Student Circle') in 1948 as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist thought.

Image source: Anarchism in France

Along with Albert Einstein, Camus was one of the sponsors of the Peoples' World Convention (PWC), also known as Peoples' World Constituent Assembly, which took place between 1950 and 1951 at Palais Electoral in Geneva, Switzerland.

Image source: World Constitutional Convention

In 1952, he resigned from his work for UNESCO when the UN accepted Spain, under the leadership of the caudillo General Francisco Franco, as a member, protesting the legitimization of Francoist rule.

Image source: UNESCO

When the Algerian War began in 1954, Camus was confronted with a moral dilemma. During the war he kept a neutral stance, advocating a multicultural and pluralistic Algeria, a position rejected by most parties on both sides.

Image source: Algerian War

In one often-misquoted incident, Camus confronted an Algerian critic during his 1957 Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Stockholm, rejecting the false equivalence of justice with revolutionary terrorism: 'People are now planting bombs in the tramways of Algiers.'

Camus's first publication was a play called Révolte dans les Asturies (Revolt in Asturias), written with three friends in May 1936. The subject was the 1934 revolt by Spanish miners that was brutally suppressed by the Spanish government, resulting in 1,500 to 2,000 deaths.

In May 1937 he wrote his first book, L'Envers et l'Endroit (Betwixt and Between, also translated as The Wrong Side and the Right Side). His early thoughts appeared in this first collection of essays, published in 1937.

His 1938 address on 'The New Mediterranean Culture' represents Camus's most systematic statement of his views at this time, articulating his vision of a pluralistic Mediterranean civilization.

Absurd themes were expressed with more sophistication in his second collection of essays, Noces (Nuptials), in 1938, which included reflections on places such as Tipasa in Algeria.

In 1938, Camus began working for the leftist newspaper Alger républicain (founded by Pascal Pia), as he had strong anti-fascist feelings, and the rise of fascist regimes in Europe was worrying him.

In 1939, Camus wrote a stinging series of articles for the Alger républicain on the atrocious living conditions of the inhabitants of the Kabylie highlands, exposing colonial neglect.

Image source: Kabylia

Alger républicain was banned in 1940 and Camus flew to Paris to take a new job at Paris-Soir as layout editor. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940.

Image source: Paris-soir

In 1942, he published the story of a man living an absurd life in The Stranger, the work that brought him widespread recognition and became one of the defining novels of the twentieth century.

Image source: The Stranger (Camus novel)

Camus began his work on the second cycle while he was in Algeria, in the last months of 1942, just as the Germans were reaching North Africa, developing themes of revolt that would culminate in later works.

By 1943 he was known because of his earlier work, establishing himself as a major literary and intellectual voice in occupied and liberated France.

He also wrote a play about the Roman emperor Caligula, pursuing an absurd logic, which was not performed until 1945, adding to his reputation as a dramatist exploring absurdist philosophy.

He wrote an essay against capital punishment in collaboration with Arthur Koestler, entitled Réflexions sur la peine capitale ('Reflections on Capital Punishment'), published by Calmann-Levy in 1957.

Image source: Capital punishment

In 1957, Camus received the news that he was to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. At the age of 44, he was the second-youngest recipient in history and the first laureate in literature born in Africa.

Image source: List of Nobel laureates in Literature

After receiving the Nobel Prize, Camus gathered, clarified, and published his pacifist leaning views at Actuelles III: Chronique algérienne 1939–1958 (Algerian Chronicles).

The play opened in January 1959 at the Antoine Theatre in Paris and was a critical success, marking one of Camus's final theatrical achievements.

Image source: Théâtre Antoine-Simone Berriau

La mort heureuse (A Happy Death) (1971) is a novel that was written between 1936 and 1938 but published posthumously, offering insight into Camus's early literary development.

Image source: A Happy Death

Le Premier homme (The First Man, published in 1994) was an unfinished autobiographical novel about his childhood in Algeria which Camus was writing before he died. Its publication sparked a widespread reconsideration of Camus's allegedly unrepentant colonialism.

Image source: First Man (film)

He had spent the New Year's holiday of 1960 at his house in Lourmarin, Vaucluse with his family and his publisher Michel Gallimard of Éditions Gallimard, along with Gallimard's wife, Janine, and daughter, Anne.

Image source: Lourmarin

Camus died on 4 January 1960 at the age of 46, in a car crash near Sens, in Le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin, cutting short one of the most influential literary careers of the century.

In Tipasa, Algeria, inside the Roman ruins, facing the sea and Mount Chenoua, a stele was erected in 1961 in honor of Albert Camus with the phrase from his work Noces à Tipasa: 'I understand here what is called glory: the right to love beyond measure.'

Image source: Tipasa

The French Post published a stamp with his likeness on 26 June 1967, commemorating the enduring legacy of the writer in France.

In 2011, Italian author Giovanni Catelli argued that Camus might have been killed by the KGB for criticizing the Soviet Union, reviving speculation about the circumstances of his death.

In 2013, Catelli published a book elaborating on his theory regarding Camus's death, followed by an English translation published in 2020, keeping debate over the crash alive.