The Stranger
by Albert Camus
Summary
Algerian office clerk Meursault reacts to his mother's funeral, a casual friendship, and eventually a senseless killing on a sun blasted beach with the same flat, unemotional detachment, and the novel follows the ensuing trial that condemns him less for his crime than for his refusal to perform the grief and remorse society expects. Camus writes in a spare, affectless style that embodies his philosophy of the absurd, the notion that the universe offers no inherent meaning and that honesty demands facing that void directly. The novel became a foundational text of existentialist literature and one of the most widely read French novels of the century.
Historical Context & Significance
No major French literary prize recognized the novel on its 1942 publication during the German occupation of France. Camus later won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, an author level honor for his entire body of work rather than for this particular novel.