Presently we heard Raymond shutting his door. She was carrying an oilcloth bag in which she had stowed our bathing kit and a towel. I mentioned this to Marie, but she paid no attention. Marie, however, was almost dancing with delight, and kept repeating, “What a heavenly day!” After a few minutes I was feeling better, and noticed that I was hungry. We went down to the street and, because of my being rather under the weather and our having kept the blind down in my room, the glare of the morning sun hit me in the eyes like a clenched fist. On our way out we banged on Raymond’s door, and he shouted that he’d be with us in a jiffy. I told her she looked quite ravishing like that, and she laughed happily. She was wearing a white dress and had her hair loose. Marie told me I looked like a mourner at a funeral, and I certainly did feel very limp. My head was aching slightly and my first cigarette had a bitter taste. As we wanted to get into the water early, we didn’t trouble about breakfast. 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 in Kamel Daoud's 2013 novel The Meursault Investigation.It was an effort waking up that Sunday morning Marie had to jog my shoulders and shout my name. Le Monde ranked The Stranger as number one on its 100 Books of the 20th Century.

Ĭonsidered a classic of 20th-century literature, The Stranger has received critical acclaim for Camus' philosophical outlook, absurdism, syntactic structure, and existentialism (despite Camus' rejection of the label), particularly within its final chapter.

The Stranger gained popularity among anti-Nazi circles following its focus in Jean-Paul Sartre's 1947 article 'Explication de L'Étranger '. 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. Published during the Nazi occupation of France, it went on sale without censorship or omission by the Propaganda-Staffel.

The original French-language first edition of the novella was published on May 19, 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. Camus completed the initial manuscript by May 1941, with revisions were suggested by André Malraux, Jean Paulhan, and Raymond Queneau and later adopted in the final version.

The stranger albert camus cover