and winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize for literature. His work explores the themes associated with existentialism, in particular the experience of ‘absurdity’ or metaphysical nihilism, and the moral reaction that the experience demands, which comes in various combinations of stoicism and rebellion. Camus’s novels include L’Étranger (1942, trs. as The Stranger, 1946, and also as The Outsider) and La Peste (1947, trs. as The Plague, 1948). Two major essays explaining the philosophical and metaphysical basis of his themes are Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1942, trs. as The Myth of Sisyphus, 1955) and L’Homme révolté (1951, trs. as The Rebel, 1953).