L’Étranger

This 1957 Gallimard edition presents Albert Camus's existentialist masterpiece in its original French. Published fifteen years after the novel's controversial 1942 wartime debut and the year Camus received the Nobel Prize in Literature, this printing represents L'Étranger at the height of its author's international recognition.

The novel's spare prose recounts Meursault's story—a French Algerian who commits murder and faces execution not primarily for his crime but for his refusal to perform socially expected emotions. Camus's "degree zero" writing style, as Roland Barthes termed it, makes the text accessible to French language learners while rewarding sophisticated readers with its philosophical depths.

For collectors and readers of French literature, owning Camus in the original language offers irreplaceable access to his distinctive voice. This Gallimard paperback, published by Camus's longtime publisher and issued during his final years, connects directly to the existentialist and absurdist movements that defined postwar French intellectual life.

Publishing Details: Éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1957. Collection Soleil. Paperback. Text in French.