In the spring of 1940, the aspiring but unknown writer Albert Camus and budding scientist Jacques Monod were quietly pursuing ordinary, separate lives in Paris. After the German invasion and occupation of France, each joined the Resistance and became crucial players in the fight to liberate the country from the Nazis. Through twists of circumstance, they developed a deep friendship, before emerging as leading voices of modern literature and biology, each receiving the Nobel Prize in their respective fields. Passionate advocates of human rights and extraordinary literary talents, they found in the other a shared determination to pursue the meaning of existence on every level from the molecular to the philosophical.