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.
“妈妈一定感受到了解脱,因而准备再重新过一遍。任何人,任何人都没有权利哭她。而我,我现在也感到自己准备好把一切再过一遍。”——《局外人》 坦白说不知道该从什么角度来谈加缪,也不知道该怎么聊这本书,所以借鉴之前看马原的讲义,他说的是一个小说的9种写法(或者叫死...
评分你有没有尝试过从悬崖绝壁的顶端往下跳? 应该没有。 为什么? 因为你会死。我也会,所有人都会。 答案既简单又神秘深奥。在我们同狩猎采集为生的祖先分道扬镳的几千年里,许多人在不停地探索这些自然科学的奥秘。这些奥秘与自然界的客观规律有关。值得庆幸的是,从牛顿力学到...
评分“妈妈一定感受到了解脱,因而准备再重新过一遍。任何人,任何人都没有权利哭她。而我,我现在也感到自己准备好把一切再过一遍。”——《局外人》 坦白说不知道该从什么角度来谈加缪,也不知道该怎么聊这本书,所以借鉴之前看马原的讲义,他说的是一个小说的9种写法(或者叫死...
评分1、加缪生于1913年,法国人,存在主义哲学家、文学家,1957年也就是他44岁的时候获得诺贝尔文学奖,这是迄今为止法国最年轻的诺贝尔文学奖得主,一般都是一些德高望重的老头子得奖,有的快要入土了,有的卧病在床,只能请人代领奖金,这是我见到的唯一一位在四十多岁就问鼎这个...
评分当人一旦静下心来,总能认真地做一些事情。比如,思考,看书,学习,写东西。 可是人的一生是有限的,学习这件事却是无限的。当我早晨醒来看了一篇豆瓣写得关于如何有效地读书的文章之后,我再一次陷入了深深地自卑当中。像已经风华绝代的贝嫂每天四点就要起床一样,李欣频曾...
我咋觉得主人公这么熟呢。。。
评分我咋觉得主人公这么熟呢。。。
评分读至最后一行才想起在大学里的第一年曾在图书馆翻过一遍中译的[收录在一本封皮都没有了的旧版本里],在那时候我碰巧也喜欢用那主人公式的局外人视角看待世界的种种荒谬。今天再看的时候最喜欢的是在监狱里的那一段描写,如何在躯体受限的状态下处理时间。
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。
评分荒谬感, 虚无感. 译名的话, 局外人、异乡人、畸零人都要比陌生人强吧. 怎样的浮世, 才能有这般生存状态, 不少地方我都看得笑了. 醉酒, 癫狂, 耳鸣, 皆是悠然心会, 妙处难与君说, 少数派的虽败犹胜在文学作品中屡试不爽. 兰波笑说: "我是一个他人." 倒是应景非常.
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