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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2067 in Books
• Published on: 1989-03-13
• Released on: 1989-03-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Amazon.com Review
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 first recounted it. --Ben Guterson

From Library Journal
The new translation of Camus's classic is a cultural event; the translation of Cocteau's diary is a literary event. Both translations are superb, but Ward's will affect a naturalized narrative, while Browner's will strengthen Cocteau's reemerging critical standing. Since 1946 untold thousands of American students have read a broadly interpretative, albeit beautifully crafted British Stranger . Such readers have closed Part I on "door of undoing" and Part II on "howls of execration." Now with the domestications pruned away from the text, students will be as close to the original as another language will allow: "door of unhappiness" and "cries of hate." Browner has no need to "write-over" another translation. With Cocteau's reputation chiefly as a cineaste until recently, he has been read in French or not at all. Further, the essay puts a translator under less pressure to normalize for readers' expectations. Both translations show the current trend to stay closer to the original. Marilyn Gaddis Rose, SUNY at Binghamton
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
“The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’s stoical anti-hero and ­devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.” –from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

One of the best books ever written.
I was told by a really good friend of mine to read this book. Looking in a bookstore on vacation, I came across it. It was cheap so I bought it, not really knowing anything about the story or what I was getting into. But I trust my friend's judgment, so I went ahead and read all of 'The Stranger' this afternoon. WOW is all I can say. The language and storytelling is so simple, so effective, that I got wrapped up in the world that Camus was engaging me in.

It reads like Salinger's 'The Catcher in the Rye', at least in my opinion. He tells the story so clearly. It's one of the most concise books I've ever read. It is quite depressing, but you oddly feel sorry for, and relate to the main character. I feel an odd sense of hope after reading it, and for people that hated it, I can't see what they're talking about. The story will engulf you and not let go until the end. Highly recommended!

American translation brings out stylistic subtleties
(This is a review of the Matthew Ward translation; black an dwhite cover)

This is a newish translation, done by an American rather than the British translation that had previously been the only English version of this French classic. It seems Camus was heavily influenced by American literature of the period -- Hemmingway, Faulkner and others -- and had written The Stranger, the first half especially, to reflect those stylistic sensibilities. The translator argues in his forward that much of that was lost in the British translation. And so here, it is restored.

The result is a matter-of-fact tone more in keeping with our unlikable protagonist, the distant, somewhat bitter Meursault. His almost emotionless life and anti-social tone are stark and ugly, traits that drag him beneath the waves when he is put on trial for murder. As always, The Stranger is compelling reading, but also frustrating, because it is so impossible to care for the main character in the final chapters.

Camus' timeless classic remains as essential today as it was when released, while this new translation gets us a bit closer to the stylistic approach he allegedly wanted. Essential reading.

Oh, the absurdity!
Oh, what does it matter if I write a review about this book or if I don't write a review about this book? Nothing will change. It won't have any affect on anything. In 100 years, I'll be dead, and what difference would it have made if I gave a writeup, or I didn't?

Is anyone ever actually going to read my opinion? And if they do, does my opinion really matter, on a cosmic, macro level? The world will keep on turning, and the sun will keep on burning, and the universe will keep....universing.

It doesn't even matter if you read this book or you don't; if you like it or you don't. It's just an abstract story about a guy, that never actually happened. Not that it would matter even if it had.