Albert Camus, the French novelist and essayist, was born in Mondovi, Algeria, and was educated at the University of Algiers. From 1934 to 1939 he was active writing and producing plays for a theater group he had founded in Algiers. About the same time he began his career as a journalist, and in 1940 he moved to Paris. During the German occupation of France, Camus was active in the resistance movement, and after the liberation of Paris he became the editor of the previously clandestine newspaper Combat. His literary fame dates from the publication in 1942 of his first novel, L'étranger (The Stranger), and an essay titled Le mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus). During the immediate postwar period Camus was deeply involved in political activity, and his name was for a time closely associated with that of Jean-Paul Sartre and with the existentialist movement. In...