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List Price: $10.95Amazon.com's Price: $7.67 You Save: $3.28 (30%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 843.914
EAN: 9780679720201
ISBN: 0679720200
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 144
Publication Date: March 13, 1989
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: March 13, 1989
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 591
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
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.
Amazon.com Review:
The Stranger is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity (and remains a staple of U.S. high school literature courses) in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt--all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of The Stranger, however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.
The plot is simple. 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. "She wanted to know if I loved her," he says of his girlfriend. "I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with "the gentle indifference of the world" remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it. --Ben Guterson
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
This book is NOT Camus's "The Stranger"! It is a literary review of the work, and NOT the work itself. If you are looking to read Camus's "The Stranger" DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK! I feel that Amazon should refund/not charge for those who buy this book thinking they are going to read Camus!
NOT CAMUS "THE STRANGER" NOT NOT NOT!
Rating:  -
Matthew Ward's translation provides a better reading experience than Stuart Gilbert's; nuances, subtleties and other details of character and dialogue are mixed and seasoned better into the broth of the story, a story about Meursault, a man alone but not lonely, who views with dispassion the alternating streams of tenderness and brutality that form human experience. His earthly incarnation seems only a vehicle through which to observe, to keenly catch fine points of gesture and expression in a context ... Read More
Rating: -
The Stranger by Albert Camus is one of those books that has been on my "To Read List" as long as I've had a to-do list for reading. I never got around to reading it, and it's only because my Great Books Group is reading it for January that I finally sat down and read it. I confess I don't fully grasp existentialism, and my lack of knowledge often presents itself as a reason for me to avoid reading books closely associated with it. Even the fact that it is only about 120 pages long did not convince me to ... Read More
Rating: -
The theme of a universe formed by the absurd and incomprehensible--a universe and its societies that claims to respect and embrace truth, impassive justness, and simplicity, yet, at the same time, condemns people that personify and act as paragons for such ideals, thrusting them into a life of ignominy--this theme has not been lost since 'The Stranger' made its first appearance; and, I dare say, in this world of reemerging religious idealism in the form of Evangelical Christianity in America, Islamic terrorism ... Read More
Rating: -
"The Stranger" is one of those novels that operates on multiple levels. On the surface, it is the brief story of Meursault, a man who attends his mother's funeral, meets a new girlfriend, goes to work, helps a neighbor get revenge on a bad girlfriend, then ends up murdering a man and going to jail and trial. It is an easy to read little book written/translated in an efficient Hemingwayesque style. In some ways, not much happens. In other ways, quite a lot happens. But throughout, the reader keeps wondering ... Read More
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