The Stranger

The Stranger is Albert Camus’s 1942 novel about Meursault, a French Algerian whose emotional detachment and killing of an Arab man lead to his conviction.

Meursault: The narrator and protagonist of The Stranger, a French Algerian whose emotional detachment shapes his account of events. His matter-of-fact voice makes ordinary sensations and the murder central to the novel’s unsettling effect.
Albert Camus: An Algerian-born French writer and philosopher whose works include The Stranger and The Plague. Camus drew on his upbringing in French Algeria when creating Meursault’s world.
Jean-Paul Sartre: A French philosopher, novelist, and playwright associated with existentialism and postwar intellectual life. Sartre’s essay on the novel helped frame its early philosophical reception.
The Outsider: The standard British English title for Albert Camus’s novel L'Étranger. It emphasizes social alienation where the American title foregrounds foreignness.
The absurd: The condition in which the human demand for meaning confronts a world that offers no ultimate answer. Meursault’s final reflections bring the novel’s central philosophical tension into focus.
The trial of Meursault: The courtroom proceedings in The Stranger that end with Meursault’s death sentence for murder. The prosecution dwells on his conduct at his mother’s funeral as well as the killing.
French Algeria: The period and territory in which France ruled Algeria as an integral part of its empire, from 1830 to 1962. The novel’s social landscape reflects a settler society under French colonial rule.
Stuart Gilbert: An English translator whose 1946 version was the first widely read English translation of The Stranger. His translation established a distinct English voice for Meursault.
The Meursault Investigation: Kamel Daoud’s novel that reimagines The Stranger through the perspective of the murdered Arab man’s brother. Its named victim challenges the original novel’s silence about his identity.
Alienation: A condition of estrangement from other people, social institutions, or one’s own experience. Meursault’s distance from expected emotions makes him appear foreign to his community.

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