L’Étranger (The Stranger, also translated as The Outsider) is the debut novel of Albert Camus, published in 1942. It is one of the best-selling French-language novels of all time and a central text of literary Existentialism and Absurdism.
Plot summary
The novel follows Meursault, an emotionally detached French Algerian who kills an Arab man on a beach in Algiers. It is structured in two parts: the days leading up to the killing, and the trial that follows. Meursault’s indifference — even to his own mother’s death — alienates those around him and ultimately condemns him.
English translations
Two major English translations exist: by Stuart Gilbert (1946), which domesticates Camus’s spare prose, and by Matthew Ward (1988), which preserves its flatness more faithfully. A third translation by Sandra Smith was published in 2012.
