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Book Review: The Stranger – Albert Camus

L’Étranger, The Stranger or The Outsider, is a 1942 novel by French author Albert Camus. Though it is a work of fiction, it is often cited as an example of Camus’ philosophy of Absurdism.

The Stranger has had a profound impact on millions of readers. 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.”

Meursault, an indifferent French Algerian, is the protagonist of The Stranger, to whom the novel’s title refers.

The novel begins:

“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.” That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.”

Right from the start, we can see Meursault’s emotional indifference and detached personality. An aspect that is often lost in translation is that he uses the child’s word “Maman”, literally “Mommy”, instead of the more adult “Mother”. Camus wrote in his notebooks that:

“The curious feeling the son has for his mother constitutes all his sensibility.”

Meursault is asked if he wants to see his mother who is sealed in the coffin. He declines the offer. During the vigil, he drinks coffee and smokes cigarettes next to the coffin, showing his indifference to his mother’s death.

That night, he happily arrives back in Algiers. The next day he goes to the beach for a swim. There he runs into Marie, his former co-worker, they go watch a comedy at the movie theatre that evening and spend the night together.

Throughout the novel, Marie asks him if he loves her, and he simply replies that: “it didn’t mean anything”, but probably not. She also asks him if he wants to marry her, he replies indifferently but says that they can get married if she wants to, so they become engaged.

Meursault has an encounter with one of his neighbours who curses and beats his mangy dog. One day, he laments that his dog has run away and can be heard weeping in the night longing for its return. This strong grief over someone losing his dog contrasts with Meursault’s indifference at losing his mother.

The climax of the novel takes part on a Sunday trip to a beach house.

“The sun was starting to burn my cheeks, and I could feel drops of sweat gathering in my eyebrows. The sun was the same as it had been the day I’d buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the skin. It was this burning which I couldn’t stand anymore, that made me move forward. I knew that it was stupid, that I couldn’t get the sun off me by stepping forward. But I took a step, one step, forward. And this time, without getting up, the Arab drew his knife and held it up to me in the sun. The light shot off the steel and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at my forehead […] My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave […] I knew I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I’d been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times at the door of unhappiness.”

Meursault kills a man whom he did not know, an involuntary and absurd act. The sun merely struck his knife, sweat was running in his eyes. From this moment he enters the world of judgment. And the world of judgment is the discovery of man.

Meursault is arrested and thrown into jail. His lack of remorse over his crime, and, in particular, his lack of grief at his mother’s funeral makes people think of him as a complete stranger.

In prison, he is tormented by the isolation from nature, women, and cigarettes.

“When I was first imprisoned, the hardest thing was that my thoughts were still those of a free man. For example, I would suddenly have the urge to be on a beach and to walk down to the water.”

He eventually adapts, sharing his mother’s attitude that “after a while, you could get used to anything”.

In the courtroom Meursault is seen as a monster and people believe that the emptiness of his heart threatens to swallow up society. His lack of belief in God, gives him the nickname “Monsieur Antichrist”.

Meursault is afflicted by the madness of sincerity, distinguished by his never wanting to say more than he feels. When asked if he grieved at his mother’s burial, he neither admits nor denies having grieved. It is this tenacious refusal, this fascination with the authenticity of what one is and what one feels that gives meaning to the entire novel.

When asked why he had killed the Arab, he says that it was because of the sun. People laugh at him. Eventually, he is found guilty and is sentenced to death by guillotine. This shows one of the forms of the Absurd, a young man who wants to live but is condemned to die.

While waiting for his execution, he struggles to come to terms with his situation, and he has trouble accepting the certainty and inevitability of his fate. He is visited by the Chaplain who tries to make him renounce his atheism and turn to God, but he refuses. Instead, he declares that he is correct in believing in a meaningless, purely physical world.

The major themes of the book include: the importance of the physical world, the irrationality of the universe and the meaninglessness of human life.

1. The Importance of the Physical World

Meursault is far more interested in the physical aspects of the world than its social or emotional aspects.

For instance, the heat during the funeral procession causes him far more pain than the thought of burying his mother. The sun on the beach torments Meursault, and during his trial he even identifies his suffering under the sun as the reason he killed the Arab.

2. Irrationality of the universe

The second theme is the irrationality of the universe. Although the notion of the absurd is not mentioned in the novel, it is implicit in it.

Which is best described as “the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless, and irrational universe with the ‘unreasonable silence’ of the universe in response.”

However, this world in itself is not absurd, what is absurd is our relationship with the universe, which is irrational. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. It is all that links them together. Thus, the universe and the human mind do not each separately cause the Absurd, but rather, the Absurd arises by the contradictory nature of the two existing simultaneously.

Camus describes it as the conflict between seeking meaning and the inability to find any in an indifferent universe.

The difficulty in accepting this notion drives people to constantly attempt to create a rational structure and meaning in their lives.

Society attempts to impose rational explanations for Meursault’s irrational actions, as the idea that things happen for no reason or that events have no meaning is disruptive and threatening to society.

The courtroom represents society’s attempt to manufacture rational order, trying to offer explanations based on reason for Meursault’s unreasonable acts. The entire trial is therefore an example of absurdity – an instance of humankind’s futile attempt to impose rationality on an irrational universe.

Camus wrote in 1955:

“ I summarised The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: “In our society any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.” I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game.”

3. The Meaninglessness of Human Life

In Absurdism, the only certain thing in life is the inevitability of death, and, because all humans will eventually meet death, all lives are equally meaningless.

Meursault realises this towards the end of the novel. Just as he is indifferent to much of the universe, so is the universe indifferent to him. We are born into a world that was there before and will remain there after we are gone.

However, in this seemingly dismal realisation, he is able to attain happiness. When he fully comes to terms with the inevitability of death, he understands that it does not matter whether he dies by execution or lives to die a natural death at an old age.

“Since we are all going to die, it’s obvious that when and how don’t matter.”

Meursault starts to truly embrace the idea that human existence holds no greater meaning. He abandons all hope for the future and accepts the “gentle indifference of the world.” This acceptance makes him feel happy.

“For the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself – so like a brother, really – I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again.”

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The Stranger in 10 Minutes | Camus

The Stranger or The Outsider is a 1942 novel by French author Albert Camus. Though it is a work of fiction, it is often cited as an example of Camus’ philosophy of Absurdism.

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4 thoughts on “ Book Review: The Stranger – Albert Camus ”

Sounds like a good read. Not playing the game really resonated with me. In my family we are expected to grieve properly. I have to play along or I will disappoint them all.

Absolutely. Although it is put into exaggeration and is fiction, it can be seen as an allegory of how alienated one can become when one does not adhere to social rules. This incentivises “herd mentality” and playing the game.

One of my all time favorites. Thanks for the reminder!

You’re welcome! Thanks for reading.

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Review: ‘Looking for “The Stranger,”’ the Making of an Existential Masterpiece

By John Williams

• Sept. 15, 2016
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In the closing days of World War II, the American publisher Alfred A. Knopf was pursuing English-language rights to Albert Camus’s novel “The Plague,” with its powerful and clear allegorical view of Nazism. With hesitation, he also acquired Camus’s first novel, “The Stranger,” which one reader at the company described as “pleasant, unexciting reading” that seemed “neither very important nor very memorable.”

The novel went on to become, by consensus, one of the most important and memorable books of the 20th century. Alice Kaplan, in the prologue to “Looking for ‘The Stranger,’” her new history of Camus’s profoundly influential debut, writes that critics have seen the novel variously as “a colonial allegory, an existential prayer book, an indictment of conventional morality, a study in alienation, or ‘a Hemingway rewrite of Kafka.’” This “critical commotion,” in Ms. Kaplan’s phrasing, “is one mark of a masterpiece.”

Ms. Kaplan sets out to tell “the story of exactly how Camus created this singular book.” It’s a story that unfolded against one of the most dramatic backdrops in history.

In his mid-20s when we meet him in 1939, Camus was a hugely ambitious, if yet to be published, writer living in his native Algeria. He was working on a novel he would abandon titled “A Happy Death”; a play about the emperor Caligula; and a philosophical essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus.” He would soon add the germinal ideas of “The Stranger” to that mix.

Camus, though, as is well known, was a man involved in the world, not a writer locked in his room, and his story is deeply entwined with the complex political climate in French-ruled Algeria during the time that France was occupied by the Nazis. Ms. Kaplan, a professor of French at Yale, is the acclaimed author of several previous books, including the memoir “French Lessons” and “Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis.” To this new project, she brings equally honed skills as a historian, literary critic and biographer.

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The Stranger

By albert camus.

Published in 1942, The Stranger is Camus' most enduring literary achievement. It has baffled and troubled readers of all ages for decades as they try to contend with Meursault's approach to life, emotions, and consequences.

About the Book

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

The Stranger by Albert Camus is regarded as one of the finest examples of absurdist fiction ever written. Camus was one of the pioneers of this form of philosophy and used it as the guiding principle in the conception and creation of  The Stranger.  This novel is certainly his best-known work of fiction. The story follows Meursault, an unusual man living in Algiers who floats from one part of his life to the next without conviction or too much emotion. Meursault, like Camus, believes in the meaninglessness of life . This means that when presented with a choice, Meursault simply acts without worrying about the consequences or how that action might be perceived. 

Key Facts about  The Stranger

• Title:   The Stranger
• When/where written : 1941-1942
• Published: France
• Literary Period: Modernism
• Genre:  Absurdist, philosophical
• Point-of-View:  First-person
• Setting: Algiers, Algeria
• Climax:  The murder of the Arab on the beach.
• Antagonist:  Raymond, Meursault himself, the nature of life.

Albert Camus and  The Stranger

Today, Albert Camus (along with Soren Kierkegaard) is regarded as a leader of the existentialist movement . Specifically, absurdism; that is, the belief that life is essentially meaningless despite the human desire for it not to be.  Camus believed that human beings have three different ways that they might confront that meaninglessness. The first of these is to commit suicide or “escape existence.” It’s an option, neither Camus nor Kierkegaard believed was the right one. Second, one might turn to religion or spirituality to find a meaning that doesn’t really exist. One takes a “leap” into the unprovable in this scenario. Lastly, there is acceptance. One must acknowledge the absurd but continue to live. Camus believed that this last option was the best. It is only through accepting the absurd that one can experience their own freedom. (Kierkegaard vehemently disagreed.) While absurdism might seem at first only tangential to  The Stranger  it is in fact at the heart of the story. Meursault is a “stranger” to society . He doesn’t believe that life has meaning nor does he seek to create through relationships.

Books Related to  The Stranger

Directly related to  The Stranger  is Camus’ best-known philosophical essay,  The Myth of Sisyphus.  It was published the same year as  The Stranger  was finished and outlines his beliefs about absurdism and the nature of life. The essay is regarded as one of Camus’ finest works and often ranks alongside  The Stranger  on lists of his most important literary achievements. Although Camus is best-known for absurdism, there are other writers who also engaged with this philosophical idea. For example, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka in which Kafka presents an absurd scenario without explanation or reason–because there isn’t one. Kafka’s  The Castle  and The Trail  are also good examples.

The Lasting Impact of The Stranger

The Stranger  is Camus’ most enduring novel . Meursault’s story has confused and haunted readers of all ages, around the world for the eighty years since it was published. The book’s opening line, “Mother died, today” is instantly recognizable as is its closing line: “I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world”. Camus saw Meursault as someone who refused to play by the rules of society. He knows that there is no point to life, despite how others try to convince him, and he pays the price for it.

The novel is regarded as a classic due to the continued challenge of reading about Meursault’s life and trying to understand him as a person. It raises questions that are often uncomfortable to ask and even more so to answer. Most importantly perhaps, it forces readers to reassess the value they place on their interactions and choices .

The Stranger Review

The stranger quotes, the stranger historical context, the stranger character list, the stranger analysis, the stranger summary, about emma baldwin.

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

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The Stranger by Albert Camus

Introduction

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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Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be

For the modern American reader, few lines in French literature are as famous as the opening of Albert Camus’s “L’Étranger”: “ Aujourd’hui, maman est morte .” Nitty-gritty tense issues aside, the first sentence of “The Stranger” is so elementary that even a schoolboy with a base knowledge of French could adequately translate it. So why do the pros keep getting it wrong?

Within the novel’s first sentence, two subtle and seemingly minor translation decisions have the power to change the way we read everything that follows. What makes these particular choices prickly is that they poke at a long-standing debate among the literary community: whether it is necessary for a translator to have some sort of special affinity with a work’s author in order to produce the best possible text.

Arthur Goldhammer, translator of a volume of Camus’s Combat editorials, calls it “nonsense” to believe that “good translation requires some sort of mystical sympathy between author and translator.” While “mystical” may indeed be a bit of a stretch, it’s hard to look at Camus’s famous first sentence—whether translated by Stuart Gilbert, Joseph Laredo, Kate Griffith, or even, to a lesser degree, Matthew Ward—without thinking that a little more understanding between author and translator may have prevented the text from being colored in ways that Camus never intended.

Stuart Gilbert, a British scholar and a friend of James Joyce, was the first person to attempt Camus’s “L’Étranger” in English. In 1946, Gilbert translated the book’s title as “The Outsider” and rendered the first line as “Mother died today.” Simple, succinct, and incorrect.

In 1982, both Joseph Laredo and Kate Griffith produced new translations of “L’Étranger,” each opting for Gilbert’s revised title, “The Stranger,” but preserving his first line. “Mother died today” remained, and it wasn’t until 1988 that the line saw a single word changed. It was then that American translator and poet Matthew Ward reverted “Mother” back to Maman . One word? What’s the big deal? A large part of how we view and—alongside the novel’s court—ultimately judge Meursault lies in our perception of his relationship with his mother. We condemn or set him free based not on the crime he commits but on our assessment of him as a person. Does he love his mother? Or is he cold toward her, uncaring, even?

First impressions matter, and, for forty-two years, the way that American readers were introduced to Meursault was through the detached formality of his statement: “Mother died today.” There is little warmth, little bond or closeness or love in “Mother,” which is a static, archetypal term, not the sort of thing we use for a living, breathing being with whom we have close relations. To do so would be like calling the family dog “Dog” or a husband “Husband.” The word forces us to see Meursault as distant from the woman who bore him.

What if the opening line had read, “Mommy died today”? How would we have seen Meursault then? Likely, our first impression would have been of a child speaking. Rather than being put off, we would have felt pity or sympathy. But this, too, would have presented an inaccurate view of Meursault. The truth is that neither of these translations—“Mother” or “Mommy”—ring true to the original. The French word maman hangs somewhere between the two extremes: it’s neither the cold and distant “mother” nor the overly childlike “mommy.” In English, “mom” might seem the closest fit for Camus’s sentence, but there’s still something off-putting and abrupt about the single-syllable word; the two-syllable maman has a touch of softness and warmth that is lost with “mom.”

So how is the English-language translator to avoid unnecessarily influencing the reader? It seems that Matthew Ward, the novel’s most recent translator, did the only logical thing: nothing. He left Camus’s word untouched, rendering the famous first line, “Maman died today.” It could be said that Ward introduces a new problem: now, right from the start, the American reader is faced with a foreign term, with a confusion not previously present. Ward’s translation is clever, though, and three reasons demonstrate why his is the best solution.

First, the French word maman is familiar enough for an English-language reader to parse. Around the globe, as children learn to form words by babbling, they begin with the simplest sounds. In many languages, bilabials such as “m,” “p,” and “b,” as well as the low vowel “a,” are among the easiest to produce. As a result, in English, we find that children initially refer to the female parent as “mama.” Even in a language as seemingly different as Mandarin Chinese, we find māma ; in the languages of Southern India we get amma , and in Norwegian, Italian, Swedish, and Icelandic, as well as many other languages, the word used is “mamma.” The French maman is so similar that the English-language reader will effortlessly understand it.

As the years pass, new generations of American readers, who often first encounter Camus’s book in high school, grow more and more removed from the novel’s historical context. Utilizing the original French word in the first sentence rather than any of the English options also serves to remind readers that they are in fact entering a world different from their own. While this hint may not be enough to inform the younger reader that, for example, the likelihood of a Frenchman in colonial Algeria getting the death penalty for killing an armed Arab was slim to nonexistent, at least it provides an initial allusion to these extra-textual facts.

Finally, and perhaps most important, the American reader will harbor no preconceived notions of the word maman . We will understand it with ease, but it will carry no baggage, it will plant no unintended seeds in our head. The word will neither sway us to see Meursault as overly cold and heartless nor as overly warm and loving. And while some of the word’s precision is indeed lost for the English-language reader, maman still gives us a more neutral-to-familiar tone than “mother,” one that hews closer to Camus’s original.

So if Matthew Ward finally corrected the mother problem, what exactly has he, and the other translators, gotten wrong? Writing of “The Stranger” ’s first line in the Guardian , Guy Dammann says, “Some openers are so prescient that they seem to burn a hole through the rest of the book, the semantic resonance recurring with the persistence of the first theme in Beethoven’s fifth symphony.”

The linguistic fluency of any good translator tells them that, syntactically, “ Aujourd’hui, maman est morte ,” is not the most fluid English sentence. So rather than the more literal translation, “Today, Mother has died,” we get, “Mother died today,” which is the smoother, more natural rendering. But the question is: In changing the sentence’s syntax, are we also changing its logic, its “mystical” deeper meaning?

The answer is a resounding oui !

Rendering the line as “Mother died today” completely neglects a specific ordering of ideas that offer insight into Meursault’s inner psyche. Throughout the course of the novel, the reader comes to see that Meursault is a character who, first and foremost, lives for the moment. He does not consciously dwell on the past; he does not worry about the future. What matters is today. The single most important factor of his being is right now.

Not far behind, though, is Maman. Reflective of Camus’s life, Meursault shares a unique relationship with his mother, due in part to her inability to communicate (Camus’s own mother was illiterate, partially deaf, and had trouble speaking). Both Camus and Meursault yearn for Maman, for her happiness and love, but find the expression of these emotions difficult. Rather than distancing mother from son, though, this tension puts Maman at the center of her son’s life. As the book opens, the loss of Maman places her between Meursault’s ability to live for today and his recognition of a time when there will no longer be a today.

This loss drives the action of the novel, leading inexorably to the end, the final period, the thing that hangs over all else: death. Early in the book, Camus links the death of Meursault’s mother with the oppressive, ever-present sun, so that when we get to the climactic beach scene, we see the symbolism: sun equals loss of mother, sun causes Meursault to pull the trigger. In case we don’t get it, though, Camus makes the connection explicit, writing, “It was the same sun as on the day I buried Maman and, like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all of the veins pulsating together beneath the skin.” As the trigger gives way, so, too, does today, the beginning—through the loss of Maman—succumb to death, the end.

The ordering of words in Camus’s first sentence is no accident: today is interrupted by Maman’s death. The sentence, the one we have yet to see correctly rendered in an English translation of “L’Étranger,” should read: “Today, Maman died.”

Photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum.

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Book Review: The Stranger , by Albert Camus

• Jul. 21st, 2016 at 8:49 PM

Albert Camus' The Stranger is one of the most widely read novels in the world, with millions of copies sold. It stands as perhaps the greatest existentialist tale ever conceived, and is certainly one of the most important and influential books ever produced. Now, for the first time, this revered masterpiece is available as an unabridged audio production. When a young Algerian named Meursault kills a man, his subsequent imprisonment and trial are puzzling and absurd. The apparently amoral Meursault, who puts little stock in ideas like love and God, seems to be on trial less for his murderous actions, and more for what the authorities believe is his deficient character.

I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.

I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.

"Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.

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The Stranger (The Outsider) By Albert Camus

Rating: brilliant.

UK Title:  The Outsider Original French Title:  L’Étranger Originally Published in French in 1942 Translated by Stuart Gilbert in 1946 Translated by Matthew Ward in 1988 Pages: 117

Review © 2009 by Stephen Roof Genre:  Classic, Literature, Philosophy

The Stranger by Albert Camus is a very short novel that can easily be read in an afternoon.  However, digesting the content will certainly take much longer as this little novel raises serious questions about morality, society, justice, religion, and individuality. 

The Stranger is recounted in first person is a very direct, no nonsense style.  The narrator is named Meursault and the story opens with him reading a telegram informing him of his mother’s death.  Meusault is not overly shocked as his mother is old and has been living in a home for the elderly.  Outwardly, he doesn’t become overcome with grief.  At the funeral he doesn’t cry as he is actually more overcome with heat due to the hot Algerian summer than with grief.  The funeral is followed by more everyday events and an ill-fated growing friendship with a local pimp.  Somehow the forces of nature and man conspire to work on Meursault in a manner that causes a sudden outburst of violence that shatters his world.

I can’t cover much of anything further without spoilers so if you want to avoid the spoilers, go directly to finding your nearest bookstore or library and pick up a copy of The Stranger , preferably translated by Matthew Ward.

The second half of The Stranger follows Meursault as he experiences the legal system for the first time.  He finds that it’s not nearly as cut and dried as he might have imagined.  Not only are the facts of the case brought out, but what seem like completely unrelated events including his mother’s funeral are brought up to “prove” points about moral character.  Meursault soon finds himself trapped in a web of chance events magnified by his own failure to behave as expected by society.

Meursalt comes across as being distanced or “alienated” from general society and this is exactly why the novel was titled, The Stranger .  He is a “stranger” in more ways than one.  First, he is a French colonist in Algeria.  Second, and even more important, he seems cut off from normal feelings, mostly due to his desire to live honestly without pretense.  He doesn’t want to display false emotions just because they are expected even though, in hindsight, he realizes this is precisely what condemns him the most. 

Meursalt’s encounter with the prison chaplain provides another powerful scene.  He doesn’t find a need to believe in God but can’t convince the chaplain.  As the chaplain works to convince Meursalt of the need to find God and forgiveness, Meursalt becomes more and more irritated until he can’t take it anymore.

There are three English translations of The Stranger .  The original translation by Stuart Gilbert was the classic translation for over 30 years.  More recently, in 1982, a new English translation appeared by Joseph Laredo which was titled The Outsider .  Then in 1988 a new “American” translation by Matthew Ward was published and it was again titled The Stranger .  This latest translation has been praised for modernizing the language while being very true to the original and I fully agree with this assessment.

I’ve read the classic Stuart Gilbert translation and the most recent translation by Matthew Ward.  I also struggled through the original French version when I took French in college.  For American readers, I definitely recommend the Matthew Ward translation which replaces some outdated vocabulary with modern words and uses American vocabulary rather than British.  A good example can be found at the beginning of Part 2.  In the original French, Camus writes, “Le jour où j’avais enterré maman, j’étais très fatiguéet j’avais sommeil.  De sorte que je ne me suis pas rendu compte de ce qui se passait.”  Gilbert translated this as, “For instance, on the day that I attended Mother’s funeral, I was fagged out and only half awake.  So, really, I hardly took stock of what was happening. ”   The Ward translation reads, “The day I buried Maman, I was very tired and sleepy, so much so that I wasn’t really aware of what was going on.”  The Ward translation reads much better for Americans and is also a much more literal translation.  Ward also used the more endearing term “Maman” instead of the formal “Mother” used by Gilbert.  I might have used “Mom” instead of “Maman” but either is much preferred to the formal air lent by the Gilbert translation.

For UK readers, I would guess that the Joseph Laredo translation titled The Outsider would be recommended but I don’t really know since I haven’t read it.  Even if you only have the original English translation by Stuart Gilbert, you’ll still be in for a great read despite the language being a bit dated.

Everyone should read The Stranger from older teens on up.  The time investment required to read it is minimal and it’s guaranteed to stimulate lots of thoughts and conversations.   Look no further for a short but powerful novel that explores the absurdities of life.

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