Camus the Outsider

Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913 to a poor family. His father died in World War I before Camus turned one. His mother was illiterate and partially deaf. Despite this start, he became one of the 20th century's most important writers by his thirties.

That background shaped his philosophy. Camus never trusted systems that promised salvation — political, religious, or philosophical. He had seen too many poor people ignored by grand stories about progress. His ideas were forged in poverty, not in academic comfort, which gave them an authenticity armchair thinkers could not match.