The Stranger
Albert Camus (1942)
“A man kills someone he barely knows, feels nothing, and goes to the guillotine refusing to pretend otherwise — and somehow becomes the most honest person in the room.”
Short Summary
Meursault, a French Algerian clerk, learns his mother has died. He attends her funeral without weeping, begins a relationship with Marie, befriends his neighbor Raymond, and — in a moment of sun-induced stupor on a beach — shoots an unnamed Arab man four times. At trial, the prosecution focuses not on the shooting but on Meursault's failure to cry at his mother's funeral. He is convicted and sentenced to death. In his prison cell awaiting execution, Meursault rejects the prison chaplain, accepts that life is meaningless, and finds a strange peace in the indifferent universe.
Detailed Summary
Part One opens with one of the most famous sentences in world literature: 'Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.' Meursault, a low-level clerk in Algiers, travels to his mother's nursing home in Marengo for her funeral. He drinks coffee, smokes cigarettes, and doesn't weep. The next d...