In 1960, two years after winning the Nobel prize for literature, French philosopher and author Albert Camus was killed in a freak car accident: Michel Gallimard, his friend and publisher, was driving Camus back to his home in Provence for the Christmas holiday when his car slipped on the icy and slammed into a tree. It seemed by all accounts a terrible accident, but now there are murmurs of conspiracy. Now, according to the Guardian , an Italian newspaper called Corriere della Sera is suggesting that the crash might have been caused by Soviet spies who damaged one of the tires on the car. This all comes from a paragraph in a diary written by Czech poet Jan Zábrana, which reads:
I heard something very strange from the mouth of a man who knew lots of things and had very informed sources. According to him, the accident that had cost Albert Camus his life in 1960 was organised by Soviet spies. They damaged a tyre on the car using a sophisticated piece of equipment that cut or made a hole in the wheel at speed… The order was given personally by [Dmitri Trofimovic] Shepilov [the Soviet foreign minister] as a reaction to an article published in Franc-tireur [a French magazine] in March 1957, in which Camus attacked [Shepilov], naming him explicitly in the events in Hungary.
Could it be true, or is it all conspiracy theories and rumor-mongering? Click through to the Guardian article to read more, and let us know what you think in the comments!