Camus provided share of sporting existential angst

Last week was the centenary of the birth of Albert Camus. The great man grew up to become the second-youngest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1957 (can you guess the youngest?) for works such as The Outsider and The Myth of Sisyphus.

Camus was born in Algeria, which you may recall, distantly, from Leaving Cert French, but what I never knew until recently was the journey he travelled from there to winning the ultimate prize in world literature. For instance, I only read last week in a piece by Geoff Dyer that when the telegram arrived in Algeria to tell Camus’ mother that her son had won the Nobel, she had to have it read out to her: she had never learned to read or write.

What’s he doing here, you may ask? Camus is also famous, in a narrower way, for facilitating an awful lot of pretentious talk about sport and philosophy.