description: 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. His confrontation with the gentle indifference of the world remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it.
language: English
title: The Stranger
titlecomplete: The Stranger
characters: Salamano, Raymond Sintès, Meursault, Marie Cardona
genres: 20th Century, Philosophy, French Literature, Literary Fiction, Novels, School, Literature, Classics, Fiction, France
ratings_count: 1016475
places: New Mexico, Algeria, North Africa
awards: awardedAt: 599644800000
name: PEN Translation Prize
category: Matthew Ward
publisher: Recorded Books