The Stranger

Hardcover, 160 pages

English language

Published Feb. 23, 1993 by Everyman's Library.

ISBN:
978-0-679-42026-2
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(60 reviews)

Thirty years after its original publication, The Stranger remains among the most influential books of our time. A terrifying picture if a man victimized by life itself--he is a faceless man, who has commited a pointless murder--it is a book whos unrelenting grip upon our consciousness has not diminished to this day.

25 editions

Review of 'The Stranger' on 'Storygraph'

Read this while trying to work through my thoughts on Arrest of a Stone Buddha (a game that blends French nihilism with Hong Kong action... definitely an interesting combination). It's a very compelling and enraging book, I think if I'd read this as a depressed teen alongside Myth of Sisyphus it would have been an instant favorite.

A decade later I don't have much use for nihilism and find the exercise here cloying and unmoving. I will give it props for being the type of philosophy I so strongly disagree with that reading it does prompt me to think a hell of a lot about why I am so put off, which I suppose is the purpose of philosophy in a way.

Review of 'The Stranger' on 'Goodreads'

This to me seems like a story about a neuro-atypical, Asperger's-like young man who runs afoul of a society geared toward only those who think and feel along "normal" parameters. It holds up a mirror to the absurdities of the modern justice system and its deficiencies in doing anything but maintaining norms for the society.

Looking forward to reading some commentaries about this one so I know what I should think and how I should feel about it.

"If by some extraordinary chance the blade failed, they would just start over. So the thing that bothered me most was that the condemned man had to hope the machine would work the first time. And I say that's wrong. And in a way I was right. But in another way I was forced to admit that that was the whole secret of good organization. In other words, the condemned man was …

Review of 'The Stranger' on 'Goodreads'

The Stranger (also known as The Outsider or L’Étranger) tells the story of Meursault, an unsympathetic French Algerian, who after attending his mother’s funeral, finds himself killing an Arab man. The novel follows a first-person narrative that explores the events before and after this murder. Albert Camus said is best when he said “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.”

On the surface The Stranger is the story of an emotionless protagonist; Meursault does not care about anything and could be considered a sociopath. However, this novel is often cited as an example of Camus’ philosophy on the absurd and existentialism. So …

Review of 'The Stranger' on 'Storygraph'

This book is straight-forward. A trip into the mind of a man, who acts and thinks like a stoic; his journey through life is simple, basically because he does what he wants and doesn't care for much. He's easily bored and seemingly steers away from what he's not attracted to. He doesn't even do a lot of "mandatory" stuff when he doesn't want to.

Even though I like the descriptions in the book as well as the plot, it's what's not there which interests me most; explanations to the man's behaviour are scarce, and this book is to me akin to Antonioni's "L'Avventura", where a clear plot is far from obvious, if even there.

All in all: short, concise and well-written. Highly interesting, mainly because it's so post-modern.

Review of 'The stranger' on 'GoodReads'

I read this book. There were parts that I liked, and I'll tell you so. It doesn't really matter. The sun was bright off the pages, and I nearly fell asleep. But all I could think about was how Camus died. That's all that should really interest any man, isn't it? It doesn't matter.

Review of 'The Stranger' on 'Goodreads'

According to the preface, this book is widely considered a work relating to existentialist philosophy though the author has denied it. I can well see how this comparison is made, as the protagonist appears to be dispassionately self-involved through most of the novel, which at least gives the impression of an existentialist worldview. It seems to me, however that rather than being a study in existentialism, this is a study of a man living mostly disconnected from the people and places he nevertheless enjoys interacting with and trying to understand. He seems to be able to go through the motions of living and pass himself off on some levels as a normal thinking/feeling human being, without the burden of really feeling or caring about anything beyond his own immediate desires.

His "breakdown" at the end of the novel is somewhat revealing, but only somewhat. I have to admit that at …

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Subjects

  • Murder
  • Literature - Classics / Criticism
  • French Novel And Short Story
  • Literature: Classics
  • Classics
  • Literary
  • Fiction / Literary
  • Adventure stories
  • Algeria
  • Fiction