The Stranger
Albert Camus · 1942
Meursault's flat affect in the face of a murder conviction and death sentence captures something genuinely unsettling about consciousness disconnected from meaning. Camus published it in 1942; Le Monde later ranked it first among the 100 greatest books of the 20th century. The purest literary expression of absurdism, and brief enough to read in a single afternoon.
The case against
Meursault shoots a man Camus never bothers to name; the Arab exists to be killed, a colonial blind spot the novel never registers. The trial is philosophy staged as courtroom, implausible on its own terms. And Meursault himself is a thesis wearing a man's clothes. Brief, yes. Slight is also a word.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
