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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 843.914
EAN num: 9780679720201
ISBN number: 0679720200
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 144
Printing Date: March 13, 1989
Publishing house: Vintage
Release Date: March 13, 1989
Sale Popularity Level: 1368
Studio: Vintage
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Amazon.com:
The Stranger is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity (and remains a staple of U.S. high school literature courses) in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt--all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of The Stranger, however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.
The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trial's proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities--that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mother's death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral are two ostensibly damning facts--so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable.
Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the story's end--dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. 'She wanted to know if I loved her,' he says of his girlfriend. 'I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't.' There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with 'the gentle indifference of the world' remains as compelling as it was when Camus very first recounted it. --Ben Guterson
Product Description:
Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed 'the nakedness of man faced with the absurd.' First published in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward.
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Rated by buyers 
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This was an amazing book, as well as an amazing translation. I loved it and I would wholeheartedly recommend it.
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This is one of my favorite books. I got really into existentialism back in highschool before reading this (and it helps to know a little about that) and I just fell in love with the book. Not much happens really, plot wise. And, its almost impossible to view the main character in a good light, so it's really not like many books out there. But because of these facts, and not in spite of them, the book is able to hold your entire attention for its terribly short duration.
Rated by buyers -
Traditionally this is considered a book about alienation. To me it tells the tragedy of having feelings considered alien by the society in which you live.
After killing a man, Meursault is taken before people who shamelessly express their desire to judge him by his personality rather than by what he did or didn't. Even the fact that he was not seen to cry at his mother's funeral becomes an evidence of his guilt. At the same time when all society turns against him in repulsion for his diversity, we start to see the honesty and naivety inherent in his thoughts and decisions. His realization at the end is genial.
Rated by buyers -
This book is a true classic. It is very well written, concise, and accessible. It is a very first person narrative of a seemingly ordinary Frenchman living in Algeria who finds himself involved in a murder. It is amazing and disturbing how easy the reader can be drawn in and caught up in the protagonist's detached view of the world.
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The universe does not care for us.
For many, this is a daunting realization.
"The Stranger" is a fictional account of a senseless murder committed by a man that knows he is alive only through sensory experiences. Everything else, be it his mother's death, his misogynistic neighbor, or even the simple sunlight, means nothing. It has no bearing on Meursault. It does not affect him. It does not concern him. He continues living without consequence.
Until he visits the beach.
It is there that, through unfortunate chance, Meursault murders a hated Arab; yet Meursault knows not why this is, both the hatred and the murder. But it does not stop him.
It is at this point where Camus introduces an absurdist element to "The Stranger." Once ensnared in the legal system, Meursault's character undergoes a series of transformations at the hands of others. But Meursault the man, Meusault the persona, remains much the same.
Unchanged.
Camus highlights the banality of persecution, impending death, and salvation, stripping these elements of meaning and instead mocking them as absurd and, ultimately, meaningless.
And for some, this knowledge is salvation.
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