Albert Camus
7 November: AC born in Mondovi, Algeria.
Father is drafted into the French army and dies in September in the First Battle of the Marne.
AC finishes school with a major in philosophy.
Contracts tuberculosis.
Marries Simone Hié.
Founds the Théâtre du Travail (Worker's Theatre).
Divorces Simone because of her morphine addiction and their infidelities.
Becomes a journalist.
Volunteers for service in the French army but is rejected on medical grounds.
Marries Francine Faure.
Writes an essay on the conditions of Muslims in Algeria that causes him to lose his job and move to Paris.
Joins the Resistance against the Germans and becomes an editor of Combat, an underground newspaper.
Writes L'etranger (The Stranger); meets Jean Paul Sartre.
From Andy Martin, in The Guardian: Camus was a movie star among French philosophers. He had Resistance chic, and wore the collar of his trench coat turned up like Humphrey Bogart. He was a man Vogue wanted to photograph, who never really had to try too hard [to attract women]. Whereas Sartre had to try very hard. “Why are you going to so much trouble?” Camus, all laid-back cool, said to him one night when they were out drinking in some Left Bank bar and Sartre had been laboriously applying his chat-up routine. “Have you had a proper look at this mug?” Sartre replied.
Writes Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus).
Francine gives birth to twins, Catherine and Jean.
Writes La Peste (The Plague).
Writes Les Justes (The Just Assassins), a play.
Has a falling out with the editorial board of Combat and leaves the paper.
His TB flares up; he spends the next two years in isolation
Writes L'Homme Revolte (The Rebel).
Begins writing the short stories in L'Exil et le Royaume (Exile and the Kingdom), which isn't published until 1957.
Writes La Chute (The Fall).
Wins the Nobel Prize in Literature.
4 January: dies in an auto accident in Sens, France on the road to Paris. An unused train ticket was found in his coat pocket, as he had planned to travel with his wife and children, but changed his plan when his publisher asked to travel with him