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The Stranger (1942)
Albert Camus
Impression published on Friday, 2008-09-26 | Novel | 3 stars
Camus is, and I say this after having read only two of his novels, one of the rare few who can write hundreds of pages and never break character. One never gets the impression while reading his books that he is looking out from behind the curtain to wink at his audience; like Dostoevsky, Camus as that weird ability to conjure (in his novels) an atmosphere that feels truly seamless. It is for this reason that I think The Stranger has won such enduring fame. Camus, a writer with this rare ability, situates his reader behind the eyes of a deeply alienated sociopath and, in so doing, causes that reader to become alienated from himself, i.e. to regard his own social habits from an apathetic distance. The effect is dizzying.
