The Guest | Author Biography

Albert Camus was born in 1913 in Mondavi, Algeria. His father died in World War I and he was raised in poverty by his mother and grandmother. As a scholarship student he completed secondary school and planned to begin university studies before falling seriously ill at seventeen with tuberculosis, an experience which shaped his understanding of human vulnerability to disease and death. He worked in Algeria as a journalist, co-founded a theater group, and in general became part of the intellectual community in Algeria before World War II. In 1934 he joined the Communist Party, but broke with it a year or two later over the issue of Algerian nationalism. During much of World War II he was in Paris as an active member of the French resistance. He published some of his most important novels, including L’Etranger (1942; The Stranger ) and La Peste (1947; The Plague) in the 1940s, when his reputation as a writer and an intellectual was at its peak. He remained in Paris after the War and worked as a reader at the publishing company Gallimard.

Albert Camus
Albert Camus

In 1952 his close friendship with Jean-Paul Sartre was broken when the two men disagreed over the legitimacy of communism in the face of the Soviet purges and labor camps. Camus bore the brunt of Sartre’s bitter personal attacks in the public press. His refusal to back any political movement which called for violence or which restricted human freedom drew more criticism from both the Left and the Right political factions in Paris during the Algerian conflict. French government officials and Algerian nationalist leaders both looked to him for support and were frustrated by his refusal to make public endorsements of either side. To some extent, the schoolmaster’s reluctance to take sides in ‘‘The Guest’’ may reflect some of Camus’ own sense of frustration with the polarized and violent Algerian conflict.

For much of the 1950s Camus suffered writer’s block, depression, and ill health. In 1956 he published La Chute (1956; The Fall) and shortly thereafter, the collection of stories L’exil et le royaume (1957;Exile and the Kingdom) from which ‘‘The Guest’’ is taken. That same year he won the Nobel Prize for literature.