The Stranger
Vintage International · first published 1942 · 144 pages
A clerk in Algiers attends his mother's funeral, begins a love affair, and is drawn into a violent act on a blinding beach.
The short, flat sentences give almost no explanation, which makes the heat, light and silences feel strangely loud.
For a night with the windows open.
About this book
Meursault, a young office worker in French Algeria, receives a telegram saying his mother has died at a home for the aged. He attends the vigil, then returns to his routine: swimming, the cinema, a relationship with Marie, and an uneasy friendship with a neighbor named Raymond. His refusal to pretend to feelings he does not have becomes the center of the book. It is brief and bare, and it continues to unsettle long after closing it.