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
From Library Journal
The new translation of Camus's classic is a cultural event; the translation of Cocteau's diary is a literary event. Both translations are superb, but Ward's will affect a naturalized narrative, while Browner's will strengthen Cocteau's reemerging critical standing. Since 1946 untold thousands of American students have read a broadly interpretative, albeit beautifully crafted British Stranger . Such readers have closed Part I on "door of undoing" and Part II on "howls of execration." Now with the domestications pruned away from the text, students will be as close to the original as another language will allow: "door of unhappiness" and "cries of hate." Browner has no need to "write-over" another translation. With Cocteau's reputation chiefly as a cineaste until recently, he has been read in French or not at all. Further, the essay puts a translator under less pressure to normalize for readers' expectations. Both translations show the current trend to stay closer to the original. Marilyn Gaddis Rose, SUNY at Binghamton
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
“The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’s stoical anti-hero and ­devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.” –from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie
From the Hardcover edition.
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.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French
From the Inside Flap
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.

L'Etranger has the force and fascination of myth. The outwardly simple narrative of an office clerk who kills an Arab, 'a cause du soleil', and finds himself condemned to death for moral insensibility becomes, in Camus's hands, a powerful image of modern man's impatience before Christian philosophy and conventional social and sexual values. For this new edition Ray Davison makes use of recent critical analysis of L'Etranger to give a full and concise description of Camus's early philosophy of the Absurd and the ideas and preoccupations from which the novel emerges. Davison also discusses the developing pattern of Camus's notion of the art of the novel, his views on 'classicism', simplicity and ambiguity, his fondness for paradox, and his love of everyday situations which yield to mythical interpretation.

阿尔贝•加缪（1913—1960）是法国声名卓著的小说家、散文家和剧作家，“存在主义”文学的大师。1957年因“热情而冷静地阐明了当代向人类良知提出的种种问题”而获诺贝尔文学奖，是有史以来最年轻的诺奖获奖作家之一。
加缪在他的小说、戏剧、随笔和论著中深刻地揭示出人在异己的世界中的孤独、个人与自身的日益异化，以及罪恶和死亡的不可避免，但他在揭示出世界的荒诞的同时却并不绝望和颓丧，他主张要在荒诞中奋起反抗，在绝望中坚持真理和正义，他为世人指出了一条基督教和马克思主义以外的自由人道主义道路。他直面惨淡人生的勇气，他“知其不可而为之”的大无畏精神使他在第二次世界大战之后不仅在法国，而且在欧洲并最终在全世界成为他那一代人的代言人和下一代人的精神导师。

我殺了人，只因為夏日陽光刺眼太熱。

世界總是喋喋不休地告訴人們，行為舉止甚至思想應該如何符合社會約定俗成的，種種道德規範下的節度。

但是，莫梭，一個居高臨下的鳥瞰者，冷靜自持，無動於衷，漠視七嘴八舌急於發表意見和批判的群眾。他倦於給出令眾人滿意的標準答案，他對合乎禮俗但不合於自己真實感受的事物，無法找到適當的對應方式和距離，於是，他被大家指責為無情、不孝、不義。

莫梭不知道在與世界衝撞的窘境下，自己存在的價值和意義。
他鳥瞰自己，也鳥瞰他人，探索內在情感與外在世界的關係，他還沒找到答案，如何給別人（何況是別人「想要的」）答案？

在這種種荒謬的情境中，莫梭凸顯了「獨立的個人」的困窘。

在他沒找到答案之前，（可能窮極一輩子都在摸索）他注定是：
一個心靈上永遠的異鄉人，一個與既定的社會格格不入的局外人。

Elegantly styled, Camus' profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer's confessions is a searing study of modern amorality.

哲學經典唯一法文直譯版
對卡繆而言，生在這荒謬世界的人，唯一真正的角色是生存，
對生活、反抗與自由有所覺醒。――美國文學巨擘William Faulkner
「生命的意義在於過程。」
諾貝爾文學獎得主卡繆一句話改變後人對於存在的思考。
卡繆分析現代知性的趨向，以「荒謬」解讀人的存在與這個世界，
透過哲學論述、文學批評及藝術來詮釋荒謬的概念。
在他筆下，神話中悲慘命運的受難者，成了反抗命運及覺醒的人類精神的象徵。
希臘神話中薛西弗斯因得罪眾神，受懲罰必須將巨石推到山頂，但到達山頂後巨石又自動滾落山腳。
薛西弗斯得一再重複這個徒勞的過程。
這則神話在存在主義盛行的時代，由哲學家卡繆提出了新解，對五、六○年代的思潮影響甚鉅。
卡繆認為，不斷推動巨石上山，正象徵著人類的「生命過程」——出生、生存的掙扎與奮鬥，最後死亡，世世代代都經歷這個過程，沒有終結。這樣的生命究竟有什麼意義？
在本書中，卡繆以洗鍊文筆探討存在的荒謬感，同時展現出與籠罩著生命的黑暗戰鬥，以及向現實挑戰的決心。
而神話中悲慘命運的受難者，在卡繆筆下成為與命運抗爭及覺醒的人類精神象徵。
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輔大哲學系助理教授 沈清楷
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台灣大學社會學系副教授 范雲
作家暨節目主持人 謝哲青
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中央大學法文系助理教授 徐佳華 導讀

'My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know.' In The Outsider (1942), his classic existentialist novel, Camus explores the alienation of an individual who refuses to conform to social norms. Meursault, his anti-hero, will not lie. When his mother dies, he refuses to show his emotions simply to satisfy the expectations of others. And when he commits a random act of violence on a sun-drenched beach near Algiers, his lack of remorse compounds his guilt in the eyes of society and the law. Yet he is as much a victim as a criminal. Albert Camus' portrayal of a man confronting the absurd, and revolting against the injustice of society, depicts the paradox of man's joy in life when faced with the 'tender indifference' of the world. Sandra Smith's translation, based on close listening to a recording of Camus reading his work aloud on French radio in 1954, sensitively renders the subtleties and dream-like atmosphere of L'Étranger. Albert Camus (1913-1960), French novelist, essayist and playwright, is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. His most famous works include The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Plague (1947), The Just (1949), The Rebel (1951) and The Fall (1956). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, and his last novel, The First Man, unfinished at the time of his death, appeared in print for the first time in 1994, and was published in English soon after by Hamish Hamilton. Sandra Smith was born and raised in New York City and is a Fellow of Robinson College, University of Cambridge, where she teaches French Literature and Language. She has won the French American Foundation Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize, as well as the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize.

In his classic existentialist novel, Camus explores the predicament of the individual who is prepared to face the benign indifference of the universe courageously and alone.

◆《異鄉人》作者／存在主義大師／諾貝爾文學獎得主／二十世紀法國文豪　卡繆
在遍地鼠屍、鼠血橫流、屍臭沖天的疫病封鎖現場直視人類恐懼、深入存在之輕與生命之重的小說創作
「法文"La Peste"的現代意義首先是『鼠疫』，『鼠疫』作為書名更能表達這部作品的神髓。」－－淡江大學法文系教授 吳錫德
這些散布在歷史當中的一億具屍體，不過就是想像中的一縷煙罷了。然而，在那縷沒有重量的輕煙裡，卻閃現著為生存而奮戰最根本的理由！
吱吱吱……吱吱吱……一天，李厄在樓梯平台上踢到一隻死老鼠。當晚，李厄上樓回家，忽然看見走廊角落竄出一隻大老鼠，步伐有些不穩，隨後在原地打轉，最後倒地從微張的嘴吐出血來。
吱吱吱……吱吱吱……就從這天開始，各處冒出猝死的老鼠屍體，緊接著是鄰人紛紛暴斃。政府只得將發生疫情的奧蘭市全城封鎖，連信件都不得流通。來自外地的旅人被困在這座不屬於自己的城市，而當地市民與外地親人的重逢也顯得遙遙無期。
吱吱吱……吱吱吱……這是高八度的喪鐘鐘聲，還是喚醒人心之善的低喃？在孤絕禁錮而束手無策的絕望情境中，你是否仍願為幸福做出最後一絲努力？

【名家推薦】◎淡江大學法文系教授　吳錫德◎作家童偉格　導讀推薦

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