French existentialist writer, born in Mondovi, Algeria. He studied philosophy at Algiers, and worked as an actor, teacher, playwright, and journalist there and in Paris. Active in the French resistance during World War 2, he became co-editor with Sartre of the left-wing newspaper Combat after the liberation until 1948. He earned an international reputation with his nihilistic novel, L'Etranger (1942, The Outsider). Later novels include La Peste (1947, The Plague) and La Chute (1956, The Fall), and he also wrote plays and several political works. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.