The Stranger (PDF) (Print)

The day his mother dies, Meursault notices that it is very hot on the bus that is taking him from Algiers to the retirement home where his mother lived; so hot that he falls asleep. Later, while waiting for the wake to begin, the harsh electric lights in the room make him extremely uncomfortable, so he gratefully accepts the coffee the caretaker offers him and smokes a cigarette. The same burning sun that so oppresses him during the funeral walk will once again blind the calm, reserved Meursault as he walks along a deserted beach a few days later-leading him to commit an irreparable act. Camus's classic novel The Stranger portrays an enigmatic man who commits a senseless crime and then calmly, and apparently indifferently, sits through his trial and hears himself condemned to death.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Albert Camus was a French-Algerian Nobel Prize winning author, journalist, and philosopher. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay 'The Rebel' that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual and sexual freedom.

Camus did not consider himself to be an existentialist despite usually being classified as one. In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any ideological associations: "No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked...".

Camus was born in French Algeria to a Pied-Noir family. He studied at the University of Algiers, where he was goalkeeper for the university association football team, until he contracted tuberculosis in 1930. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement after his split with Garry Davis's Citizens of the World movement. The formation of this group, according to Camus, was intended to "denounce two ideologies found in both the USSR and the USA" regarding their idolatry of technology.