Which French-Algerian author won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature?

The French-Algerian author who won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature was Albert Camus.

Camus was born in 1913 in Mondovi, French Algeria, to a French family and wrote primarily in French. The Swedish Academy praised his literary work for illuminating “the problems of the human conscience in our times.” His writing combined moral questions, political conflict, absurdism and the search for meaning.

His best-known works include The Stranger, published in 1942, The Myth of Sisyphus and The Plague. Although Camus was often associated with existentialism because of his friendship with Jean-Paul Sartre, he resisted being placed under a single philosophical label. Their friendship later broke down over political and ideological disagreements.

Camus was 44 when he received the prize, making him one of the younger Literature laureates. He died only three years later, in 1960, in a car accident. The other choices were major writers, but none won the 1957 Literature prize: Sartre won in 1964 but declined it, while Gide and Beckett won in other years.