Book : The Stranger - Albert Camus

-Titulo Original : The Stranger

-Fabricante :

Vintage

-Descripcion Original:

With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, The Stranger-Camuss masterpiece-givesus the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie; translated by Matthew Ward.Behind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed the nakedness of man faced with the absurd and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. “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 DunwoodieFirst published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward. Review 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, Camuss 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 its 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 hes 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 trials proceedings are absurd, a parsing of incidental trivialities--that Meursault, for instance, seemed unmoved by his own mothers 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 storys 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 didnt mean anything but that I probably didnt. Theres a latent ominousness in such observations, a sense that devotion is nothing more than self-delusion. Its 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 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 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. From the Back Cover 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. About the Author Born in Algeria in 1913, Albert Camus published The Stranger-now one of the most widely read novels of this century-in 1942. Celeb