"My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know." In "The Stranger" (1942), Camus' classic existential novel, he explores the alienation of an individual who refuses to conform to social norms. His anti-hero, Meursault, will not lie. When his mother dies, he refuses to show emotion 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 intensifies his guilt in the eyes of society and law. Yet, he is as much a victim as a criminal. Camus' depiction of a man confronting the absurd and rebelling against social injustice depicts the contradiction of man's joy in life when faced with the "tender indifference" of the world. Sandra Smith's translation, based on a careful listening to a recording of Camus reading his work on French radio in 1954, sensitively captures the nuances and dreamy atmosphere of "L'Étranger."

Albert Camus (1913-1960), a French novelist, essayist, and playwright, is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. His best-known works include "The Myth of Sisyphus" (1942), "The Plague" (1947), "The Just Assassins" (1949), "The Rebel" (1951), and "The Fall" (1956). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, and his last novel, "The First Man," was incomplete at the time of his death and was first published in 1994 and released in English shortly thereafter by Hamish Hamilton. Sandra Smith was born and raised in New York and is a Fellow at Robinson College, University of Cambridge, where she teaches French Literature and Language. She has won the Florence Gould Translation Prize from the French-American Foundation and the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize.

Pages: 128, Dimensions: 11.8x11.8cm