A pied-noir from Algeria, Camus became the philosophical voice of post-war France with novels — The Stranger, The Plague — and essays — The Myth of Sisyphus — that confronted the absurdity of existence without the consolations of religion or ideology. He broke with Sartre over Communism and refused to support Algerian independence during the war, a position that isolated him politically. He won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and died in a car crash aged 46.

• Nationality: FR
• Roles: writer, philosopher