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Description
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 0.42 x 7.97 inches
Lexile measure : 880L
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Top Amazon Reviews
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
He writes really well. He doesn't get overly lost in minor details. He provides enough information for you to picture each scene. The story does get a little slow in some parts. The idea of some of the characters seemingly okay with spousal abuse is a bit disturbing, have to admit that. Overall, it's well written and a quick read.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 15, 2025 by M.J.
Reading a novel nearly 80 years after publication, it’s provoking to think of all that has changed and the things that never will. Moments that are huge or depicted as monumental but made trivial as everyday decisions. The author reflects the soul of many growing, the way the mind works in short, fluid decisions but compiled together make one guilty whether intentional or not. Despite not being my typical genre of choice, I can see the necessity for every reader to read this novel at least once.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2025 by Alex
Brilliantly written book. Completely tragic. Although topically this sounds absurd, to read a book about the meaninglessness of life is a fresh reminder of how sad that philosophy must be. A spectacular contrast, to faith. The writing in the first person was poetic and illuminating. Highly recommend.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2025 by Brian Books
Two hour read . Was okay book had some stand out moments that made me think deeper. Definitely enjoyable quick read
Reviewed in the United States on May 13, 2025 by Diamond
The narrator doesn't show his emotions because he simply doesn't have them. Everything is in terms of gray for him. His girlfriend asks him to marry her and he says yes after telling her that it's one thing or another. The prospect of marriage makes him neither happy nor sad, it just is. He never cries; not when his mother dies and not when he commits murder. The characters are likeable, especially the narrator. We get a chance to get into his mind to see what makes him tick. A wonderful tale!
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Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2025 by Belinda Wilson
I first became acquainted with Camus in the early 70s while studying existential philosophy, in particular, his book THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS: AND OTHER ESSAYS. It was Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Samuel Beckett, who made up a group of writers I was reading at the time, all espousing existentialism, the absurdity of trying to find meaning in the universe. Some of them wrote plays which earned the term Theater of the Absurd. THE STRANGER is Camus' fictional presentation of that philosophy, though the term “existentialism” is never used. The protagonist of THE STRANGER, Meursault, whether he realizes it or not, is the prototypical existentialist. As such, he lives in a cold, indifferent universe, where the only certainty in life is death. You can take this path in life, or that, this action, that action, inaction -- ultimately, nothing matters. Camus puts us inside the head of this character, and it's a bleak, at times scary, place. Truly a classic of modern literature. One critic has said though the book seems simple and straightforward on the surface, it would take another book at least as long as THE STRANGER to unpack all the themes, philosophy, and undiscovered meanings within. I think he's probably correct. SPOILERS AHEAD: The protagonist, our narrator, Meursault, is a resident of Algiers. In the novel's opening paragraph, he tells us in a matter-of-fact, emotionless way: Mama died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from home: 'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday. This is the Meursault with whom we'll be traveling for the remainder of the novel: psychologically detached, emotionless, indifferent. He seems to focus on trivial details, and reports them to us in that flat, dispassionate manner. The first chapter ends with his mother's funeral, which he attends more like a casual observer than a son. Just then the caretaker came in behind me. He must have been running. He stuttered a little. “We put the cover on, but I'm supposed to unscrew the casket so you can see her.” He was moving toward the casket when I stopped him. He said, “You don't want to?” I answered, “No.” He was quiet, and I was embarrassed because I felt I shouldn't have said that. He looked at me and then asked, “Why not?” but without criticizing, as if he just wanted to know. I said, “I don't know.” And then by the end of chapter two, It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Mama was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed. When Meursault's neighbor, Raymond Sintes, abuses his girlfriend, Meursault sympathizes with him because they believe she was cheating on Raymond, and he helps Raymond write a letter to lure back his girlfriend for one last humiliation. I did it just as it came to me, but I tried my best to please Raymond because I didn't have any reason not to please him. We see that Meursault isn't exactly immoral, he's amoral. He makes no moral judgments. One action is as good as another, it seems. It's all the same. What slowly emerges is Meursault's view of a blind, uncaring, cold universe. Meursault has a girlfriend, Marie. She asks him if he'd like to get married and his answer is that it doesn't make any difference to him, so sure if she wanted to. He gets involved with some Arabs who are stalking Raymond for abusing his girlfriend, and in a strange scene at the beach, Meursault shoots and kills one of the Arabs. His excuse in court is that the sun was in his eyes. It is in the final scenes of the novel, in his cell awaiting either his execution or a stay, that Meursault's existential philosophy emerges in its full form. He is now calm that he realizes whether he lives or dies really makes no difference. Everyone is condemned to the same fate. Realizing the utter futility of it all, he finds peace, even a happiness. For the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2014 by M.D. Kuehn