Born in Algeria in 1913, Albert Camus published The Stranger–now one of the most widely read novels of this century–in 1942. Celebrated in intellectual circles, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.
The Stranger is not merely one of the most widely read novels of the 20th century, but one of the books likely to outlive it. Written in 1946, Camus's compelling and troubling tale of a disaffected, apparently amoral young man has earned a durable popularity (and remains a staple of U.S. high school literature courses) in part because it reveals so vividly the anxieties of its time. Alienation, the fear of anonymity, spiritual doubt--all could have been given a purely modern inflection in the hands of a lesser talent than Camus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and was noted for his existentialist aesthetic. The remarkable trick of The Stranger, however, is that it's not mired in period philosophy.
The plot is simple. A young Algerian, Meursault, afflicted with a sort of aimless inertia, becomes embroiled in the petty intrigues of a local pimp and, somewhat inexplicably, ends up killing a man. Once he's imprisoned and eventually brought to trial, his crime, it becomes apparent, is not so much the arguably defensible murder he has committed as it is his deficient character. The trial's proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities--that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mother's death and then attended a comic movie the evening after her funeral are two ostensibly damning facts--so that the eventual sentence the jury issues is both ridiculous and inevitable.
Meursault remains a cipher nearly to the story's end--dispassionate, clinical, disengaged from his own emotions. "She wanted to know if I loved her," he says of his girlfriend. "I answered the same way I had the last time, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't." There's a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. It's undoubtedly true that Meursault exhibits an extreme of resignation; however, his confrontation with "the gentle indifference of the world" remains as compelling as it was when Camus first recounted it. --Ben Guterson
From Library Journal
The new translation of Camus's classic is a cultural event; the translation of Cocteau's diary is a literary event. Both translations are superb, but Ward's will affect a naturalized narrative, while Browner's will strengthen Cocteau's reemerging critical standing. Since 1946 untold thousands of American students have read a broadly interpretative, albeit beautifully crafted British Stranger . Such readers have closed Part I on "door of undoing" and Part II on "howls of execration." Now with the domestications pruned away from the text, students will be as close to the original as another language will allow: "door of unhappiness" and "cries of hate." Browner has no need to "write-over" another translation. With Cocteau's reputation chiefly as a cineaste until recently, he has been read in French or not at all. Further, the essay puts a translator under less pressure to normalize for readers' expectations. Both translations show the current trend to stay closer to the original. Marilyn Gaddis Rose, SUNY at Binghamton
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Review
“The Stranger is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward’s translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus’s stoical anti-hero and devious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity.” –from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie
From the Hardcover edition.
Description
Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." First published in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward.
Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French
From the Inside Flap
Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." First published in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward.
每隔些年读《局外人》都会有新收获,大概这是判断一本书能不能列为经典的标准。 1. “活在当下”既积极也消极。好的部分,那就是容易在日常生活里获得快乐。比如默尔索下班后和同事一起追着卡车跑,气喘吁吁,只为了去听卡车链条哗啦声与内燃机噼啪声。比如沿着码头傍晚散步,...
评分 评分读客这个版本,除了外书皮很难看之外,样样都不错: 译文——是一个全新的译本,流畅干净,窃以为比郭宏安的好; 内封面——黑色的硬精装上镌着加缪的头像,沉稳漂亮; 腰封——在腰封直接印上了我的ID,虽然知道这是定向赠书,但还是开心,于是这成了我拿到一本新书后唯一没有...
评分 评分我咋觉得主人公这么熟呢。。。
评分两个晚上枕边时间看完了。大学时看的中文版,那时那地的那种迷恋已不在,曾经以为的只有自己才是同样的"异乡人"的傻乎乎的自怜也早已不在。因为其实每个人都是stranger,都是深渊、毒药和地狱。
评分Don't really like the absurd hero.
评分我咋觉得主人公这么熟呢。。。
评分在布满预兆与星星的夜空下,我第一次敞开心胸,欣然接受这世界温柔的冷漠。体会到我与这份冷漠有多么贴近,简直亲如手足。我感觉自己曾经很快乐,而今,也依然如是。
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