“The Outsider (The Stranger) “ by Albert Camus
The Stranger was published in French as L’Étranger in 1942, as The Outsider in England & as The Stranger in the United States.
The book followed the narrative of a Frenchman named Meursault, his lack of emotions / grief from his mother’s recent death was later used against him after he was charged and tried for murder.
It’s a very short and quick read but this book which was published 79 years ago was far more profound than 117 pages.
“Mother died today. Or maybe it was yesterday, I don’t know.”
These were its famous first lines that captured the character’s anomie so brilliantly. (see the sociology term – anomie here) This tiny book raised serious questions about morality, society, justice, religion, and individuality. It’s no news that Camus explored absurdity in his novels, and how he questioned the meaning of life.
The story was easy and light to begin with then it got intense followed by some breathtaking monologues that both amazed me and again disappointed in humanity as society didn’t seem to have gone too far from almost 80 years ago.
Camus’s afterword below sum it up beautifully:
He refuses to lie. Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler…..
He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened…..
This truth is as yet a negative one, a truth born of living and feeling, but without which no triumph over the self or over the world will ever be possible.
Wisdom Of Heart 