Publisher, Recorded Books (May 2005)

With millions of copies sold The Stranger is one of the most widely read novels in the world. It stands as perhaps the greatest existentialist tale ever conceived. When a young Algerian named Meursault kills a man, his subsequent imprisonment and trial are puzzling and absurd. This remarkable translation by Matthew Ward has been considered the definitive English version since its original publication.

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.

About the Author: Albert Camas is considered one of the leading voices of existentialism. He was born in Algeria to a working-class family, and his father died in World War I. He moved to France in 1938 and joined the resistance during World War II. With Jean-Paul Sartre he founded Combat, a leftist newspaper. Camus' best-known books include The Stranger and The Plague. He died in a car accident in I960.