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Hello, shortly after the new year of 1960, a small family car crashed in the French town of

Vilbleva in Burgundy, killing two of its occupants.

One was the publisher, Michel Galemar, the other was the writer, Albert Camus.

In Camus' pocket was an unused train ticket, and in the boot of the car his unfinished autobiography, The First Man.

Camus was 46 when his life was cut short, but had already worked for the French

resistance, editing an underground newspaper, befriended and fallen out with Jean Paul

Sartre, written a series of brilliant books and won the Nobel Prize for literature.

And although he's been dead for nearly 50 years, his ideas on the absurdity of life and the richness

of his writing, Live On.

Here to discuss Arbe Camus, one of the most enigmatic,

and talented writers of the 20th century

are Peter Dunwoody, Professor of French Literature

at Goldsmiths, University of London,

David Walker, Professor of French at the University of Sheffield, and Christina

Howell's Professor at Waddam College, University of Oxford.

Peter Dunwoody, Camus was born in 1913 in Moldova in Algeria and brought him in Belkor a poor district of the capital

Algiers what kind of upbringing did he had and did it as it were set the course

of the rest of his life? Yes I think one can say it did.

His background is essentially working class,

his father of French extraction,

...