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The masterpiece of Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus, now in a striking American English translation, The Stranger remains vital for its unsettling insights into the impossibility of moral certainty in the face of violence. “Matthew Ward has done Camus and us a great service. The Stranger is now a different and better novel for its American readers; it is now our classic as well as France’s.”—Chicago Sun-Times Since it was first published in English, in 1946, Albert Camus’s first novel, The Stranger (L’etranger), has had a profound impact on millions of American readers. Through this story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sundrenched Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed “the nakedness of man faced with the absurd.” Now, in this illuminating translation, extraordinary for its exactitude and clarity, the original intent of The Stranger is made more immediate. This haunting novel has been given a new life for generations to come. Read more
Publisher : Vintage
Publication date : March 13, 1989
Language : English
Print length : 123 pages
ISBN-10 : 1
ISBN-13 : 01
Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
Dimensions : 5.17 x 0.4 x 7.97 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #487 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #28 in Psychological Fiction (Books) #48 in Classic Literature & Fiction #126 in Literary Fiction (Books)
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Top Amazon Reviews
Format: Paperback
This is not light reading. Despite its length of 123 pages, The Stranger is a literary endurance test: exhausting, exhaustive, excruciating ... and excellent. Meursault is nobody special. A pied-noir residing in pre-World War II Algeria, he guns down an Arab in cold blood on a blistering summer day. The protagonist is thrust into the limelight, and a man who once took life at face value finds himself examining a vacuous life. Such is the plot, but this author's main interests lies elsewhere. Is life not absurd, Camus challenges us through his anti-hero Mersault, when human life is so terminal and soon-forgotten? If yes, why not thrash it and mock it? This question of the absurd has drawn many comparisons with Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, but Camus shook off the existentalist moniker, and this is a tribute to the Frenchman's intellectual honesty. For the idea of the absurd in this novella contrasts sharply with those of classic existentalists, and Camus's artistic technique differs as well. My reading of The Stranger hinged on whether, like existentialists, Camus intended to create humor or artistic distance, and in the end, finding no such evidence in the text, I decided he did not. This is bone-hard reality: a prima facie argument delivered with raw power and skilled craftsmanship, but without, I think, sufficient perspective. Unlike Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, Camus is not poking fun at a 20th-century Chernyshevsky or Hegel here. Camus is right in there with Mersault--dead serious--in this tract of complex ideas and stark layering. The protagonist's declarative statements carry a raw, political force, and indeed he's quite terrifying, and the novel will leave many readers baffled and disturbed. In a word, this book is surreal, and when read from a surrealist's perspective, the book falls neatly into place for me. A central, philosophical question is this: is Mersault stark-raving mad, or is the world? And if it's the latter, is this murderer in fact sane? What does this say about morality and ethics? Camus doesn't want us laugh at his protagonist as we do Dostoevsky's underground man; we might agree with him instead. As surrealist Andre Breton would say, Mursealth is above "conscious moral or aesthetic self-censorship," where the convicted becomes society's accuser. The crowd is lost in self-serving hypcrisy and delusion, and only Mersault has the wit and integrity to tell them. In this way, Camus argues for his protagnonist's sanity and ethical grounding as he delivers a dark, foreboding message from the cell of an Algerian prison. The author's sillogism goes something like this: life's unhappy and then we die. Life shouldn't be unhappy, even though we're going to die. Therefore, if we want to be happy, we must embrace death. Like all arguments, this one makes assumptions: people aren't happy, people can't find happiness in the absence of embracing death (such as through spiritual faith). Mersault shouts out his disgust with a rotten world and finds solace in it; he does this in a kind of self-declaration, where he's entitled to speak for himself if he so pleases. In true, post-modern style, Camus suggests we listen to his maverick. Surrealists typically embrace the idiosyncratic and individual while rejecting all forms of group-think--even to the point of refusing to define insane. So no irony is intended when Salvador Dali declares, "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad." This is Mersault. Surrealism was popular in Camus's France during the 20th century, but as a reader I nevertheless need to ask whether Mursealt is mad. Mersault is a man of acute awareness struggling in an insane world. This man can murder without contrition, and when the crowd screams out ugly bile in response, they speak with a twisted--but elegant--harmony on the matter of life's cruel nature. In this there's universal solice, and Mersault's individual, relative reality is conjoined with the universal's. Having come full circle, we're left in a moral conundrum where murder is sane. Now Camus has trapped us. Or has he? It's difficult to laugh at Mersault since he's so disturbing. So I approached this question of Mersault's sanity by evaluating the argument, a dangerous foray inside a man's matrix. But this is precisely where Camus failed, in my view--a wry commentary on a book that was so beautifully constructed atop the human intellect. Kierkegaard avoided the trap of self-declaration when he acknowledged a universal idea of the ethical before allowing a need for a telelogical (i.e., with a purpose) suspension of that ethical, and only as a true act of faith. Mersault has no faith, and his suspension of the ethical is purposeless. That is, he has not placed his transgression on the shoulders of a higher authority. Faith is a paradox, Kierkegaard says, and a moral individual will transcend the ethical only on faith that a higher authority will intervene in this life. Mersault absolves himself of such consequences, and as such, morally disconnects himself from the world of mankind. If this is not a form of madness, then what is? I think the argument collapses here: what's missing in The Stranger is layering. Dostoevksy, too, on the other hand, layers his argument vis-à-vis artistic distancing by presenting his anti-hero in the form of parody. Knowing this, can't we begin to smile at Mersault's self-certain simplicity, despite the internal logic of his argument? The elements of paradox and mockery are not present in The Stranger, but should be. It's a shame. The 20th century was the most violent and ideologically deranged century in human history. This is a great novel and an excellent read, but like so much literature of that era, The Stranger said more about the world in which it was written than perhaps was intended. My Titles Shadow Fields Snooker Glen
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Reviewed in the United States on February 29, 2008 by D. F. Whipple
Format: Kindle
I did not hear anything before this book, in fact, you could say it's the first time in ages I read a book again, my expectations with a book it's like a movie, I expect an interesting start, and indeed it is very explicit narrating the whole Mother funeral and then the history feels a bit cold with Raymond and Masson, anyway it's a great start to read books again. Bye!
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Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2025 by Jesús Plasencia Toledo
Format: Kindle
The Stranger, by Albert Camus, took only five hours or so to read but was worth every penny, mainly because of the author's unique writing style, which is economical of words, while saying a lot. He can describe in two sentences what takes other writers two paragraphs to convey. Dialog is short and only used when necessary to move the story along. The novel also has a worthy subject, that of whether the unexamined life is not worth living, as his fellow famous countryman, Rene Descarte, once proclaimed. I'm sure the main character, Monsieur Meirsault, looking back on everything, would disagree. That I know many people just like him, makes the story that much more relatable and relevant. Meirsault is like a lot of people, neither the best nor the worst. He focuses on what is in front of him, taking life as it comes, never worrying about how it all fits together or how his actions may affect others. He simply doesn't care, and that unfortunately brands him as malevalent. The Stranger may not behave like you or I, but he is like every man, and that is what makes this novel so compelling to read.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2025 by Chris in L.A.
Format: Kindle
Nice and interesting story line ! Enjoyed it! Would recommend it to other people ! A good read ! Greatful I read it !
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2025 by Jan Diebold
Format: Kindle
As for the quality of the kindle edition, not the book itself - the format was okay, but there were a few weird issues here and there - like paragraphs not indented correctly, or an indentation made and a paragraph started when it shouldn’t have been. I also noticed that many sentences that seemed to start with “A” had the A left off. (For instance: A man came to the door. In this format it would show up as: man came to the door. It is minor, yes, but annoying - and it happened a good amount of times in the text.) As for the story, I wasn’t really into it. It was a highly regarded “classic” by many, but it wasn’t my jam. Very nihilistic. If you like hearing about how nothing you do in life matters, or nothing makes any difference, over and over ad nauseum, then this is the book for you. It’s like listening to an indifferent teenager going, “Whatever, I don’t care” for three hours. I wouldn’t bother reading this again.
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Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2025 by Amazon Customer
Format: Paperback
A very thought provoking book. The translation takes a chapter or so to get used to, but it is well worth the read. It makes you wonder how far you might be from becoming someone terrible. Is the only reason you have grown up to obey the law and choose peace because you have loved and feel loved? Or maybe it's hope and the desire to spread that hope to others. If you were outcast, and without hope, could you honestly say you wouldn't be any different?
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Reviewed in the United States on October 22, 2025 by Amazon Customer
Format: Kindle
Very interesting read. The protagonist seems to be in a constant state of internal struggle and contentedness at the same time. Filled with exciting twists and turns, it calls to try and understand a different time and mindset of the narrator which is no simple task.
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2026 by alan lucas