L'étranger

French language

Published March 17, 2005

ISBN:
978-2-07-030602-2
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The Stranger (French: L'Étranger [l‿e.tʁɑ̃.ʒe]), also published in English as The Outsider, is a 1942 novella by French author Albert Camus. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of Camus' philosophy, absurdism, coupled with existentialism; though Camus personally rejected the latter label.The title character is Meursault, an indifferent French settler in Algeria described as "a citizen of France domiciled in North Africa, a man of the Mediterranean, an homme du midi yet one who hardly partakes of the traditional Mediterranean culture." Weeks after his mother's funeral, he kills an Arab man in French Algiers, who was involved in a conflict with one of Meursault's neighbors. Meursault is tried and sentenced to death. The story is divided into two parts, presenting Meursault's first-person narrative view before and after the murder, respectively. In January 1955, Camus wrote this:

I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I …

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A Sunburned Soul: Confronting Absurdity in Camus’ The Stranger

Reading The Stranger by Albert Camus left me both unsettled and oddly calm — like staring into a bright, empty sky and realizing it has no answers. Originally published in 1942, this novel is often seen as the embodiment of Camus’ philosophy of the absurd, and with good reason.

The story follows Meursault, a French-Algerian clerk who reacts to life’s most significant events — his mother’s death, a romantic relationship, even a murder — with unsettling emotional detachment. His indifference is not cruelty, but a radical honesty: he simply refuses to pretend that life has inherent meaning.

When Meursault shoots an unnamed Arab man under the blazing Algerian sun, it feels less like a crime of passion than an existential rupture. What follows is not just a murder trial, but a trial of Meursault’s character, his lack of faith, his refusal to lie about grief or belief. Society, it seems, …