The Stranger (Camus novel)

The Stranger

Cover of the first edition (Collection Blanche)
Author	Albert Camus
Original title	L'Étranger
Translator	Stuart Gilbert (1946) Matthew Ward (1989)
Language	French
Genre	Philosophical novel
Set in	Algeria
Publisher	Gallimard
Publication date	19 May 1942
Publication place	France
Media type	Print (paperback)
Pages	159

The Stranger (French: L'Étranger [letʁɑ̃ʒe], lit. 'The Foreigner'), also published in English as The Outsider, is a 1942 novella written by French author Albert Camus. The first of Camus's novels published in his lifetime, the story follows Meursault, an indifferent settler in French Algeria, who, weeks after his mother's funeral, kills an unnamed Arab man in Algiers. The story is divided into two parts, presenting Meursault's first-person narrative before and after the killing.^[1]

Camus completed the initial manuscript by May 1941, with revisions suggested by André Malraux, Jean Paulhan, and Raymond Queneau that were adopted in the final version. The original French-language first edition of the novella was published on 19 May 1942, by Gallimard, under its original title; it appeared in bookstores from that June but was restricted to an initial 4,400 copies, so few that it could not be a bestseller. Published during the Nazi occupation of France, it went on sale without censorship or omission by the Propaganda-Staffel.

It began being published in English from 1946, first in the United Kingdom, where its title was changed to avoid confusion with the translation of Maria Kuncewiczowa's novel of the same name; after being published in the United States, the novella retained its original name, and the British-American difference in titles has persisted in subsequent editions. The Stranger gained popularity among anti-Nazi circles following its focus in Jean-Paul Sartre's 1947 article "Explication de L'Étranger" ("Analysis of The Stranger").^[2]

Considered a classic of 20th-century literature, The Stranger has received critical acclaim for Camus's philosophical outlook, absurdism, syntactic structure, and existentialism (despite Camus's rejection of the label), particularly within its final chapter.^[3] Le Monde ranked The Stranger as number one on its 100 Books of the 20th Century.^[4] The novella has twice been adapted for film: Lo Straniero (1967) and Yazgı (2001), has seen numerous references and homages in television and music (notably "Killing an Arab" by The Cure), and was retold from the perspective of the unnamed Arab man’s brother in Kamel Daoud's 2013 novel The Meursault Investigation.