Albert Camus, L'Étranger [The Outsider / The Stranger]

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L’Etranger

(1942) [translated as

The Outsider

, or

The Stranger

] is the first novel that Camus published. It sold well even during the Occupation and became the best selling book ever published by Gallimard – in its paperback series, Folio, started in 1972, 6.6 million copies have been sold. It has been translated into at least 54 languages, and has several times been adapted for the stage and the cinema. It is a story with which readers from widely varying cultures have identified, a classic of the modern world, an engagement in the grand debates of universal humanity. Like Samuel Beckett’s

Waiting for Godot

(1953), it speaks to us of a world in which community, God, and other kinds of transcendence no longer seem credible. In contrast to

Waiting for Godot

, however, it does not end…

2505 words

Citation: King, Adele. "L'Étranger". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 April 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=19298, accessed 19 March 2024.]

19298 L'Étranger 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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