French President Nicolas Sarkozy is pressing to re-inter the remains of Albert Camus, one of France's greatest 20th-century writers, in the Pantheon in Paris.

The proposal is a controversial one, Time magazine reports. Critics accuse the conservative Sarkozy of trying to hijack a French leftist.

Camus, who died at the age of 46 in a 1960 car crash, is best known for his novel "The Stranger." His body now lies in a cemetery in the Vaucluse in the south of France.

"I don't think Albert Camus has any need of Sarkozy, I think Sarkozy has greater need of some intellectual sparkle," Olivier Todd, author of a biography of Camus, told France Inter radio. "This is a gimmick -- it's part of his technique of hijacking the intellectual milieu. It flies absolutely in the face of everything that Camus stood for."

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