A review by samuel_peterson
The Stranger by Albert Camus

3.0

Paperback.

While reading, I was reminded of Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory." Reading this book was to enter the mind of a nihilist. Camus wrote a story about the "absurd" reality we live in through the lens of a man so trapped in his own immediate experience that he is unable to take hold of his life in anything more than a day at a time. His relationships with others were purely carnal and conditional. The story was at all times, surreal and artistically beautiful to read, but morally hopeless. I enjoyed the moments of macabre hilarity amidst life's most tragic and irredeemable points - a murder trial.

I would recommend because it is short and, regardless of its moral hopelessness, it is well-written even as a translation.