The Outsider Hb Everymans Library Classics

The Outsider also published as The Stranger is Albert Camus’s 1942 novel about Meursault, a French-Algerian clerk living in colonial Algiers. After his mother’s death, Meursault refuses to perform the expected signs of grief. His emotional detachment becomes central when he is later involved in the killing of an Arab man on a sun-drenched beach. At his trial, Meursault is judged as much for his perceived indifference at his mother’s funeral as for the killing itself. The novel explores social conformity, emotional expectation, mortality, the indifference of the physical world, and what Camus called the “absurd”: the tension between people’s desire for meaning and a universe that does not supply clear answers. The Everyman’s Library edition is translated from French by Joseph Laredo and introduced by Peter Dunwoodie. It is a hardback edition of 152 pages, ISBN 9781857151398.