THE STRANGER, Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert.

First American Edition. 8vo, publisher’s original tan cloth lettered in brown. 154. A good copy with some wear at the extremities and some aging to the cloth.

Edizione: first american edition. “the stranger is a short novel about an ordinary little man living quietly in algiers. slowly but inexorably life begins to stalk him. the pace quickens until the little man commits a useless murder and reaches a climax after his trial. camus presents an indelible picture of a helpless human being.” (dustjacket)<br> first published in 1942 in french, the existentialist classic has an opening line for which the translation has been debated and variously rendered in english for more than sixty years. "mother died today. or, maybe, yesterday, i can't be sure." the english publisher, hamish hamilton, insisted on the alternate title the outsider; knopf held to the more ambiguous the stranger for this disquieting philosophical novel narrated by a man who appears to feel no particular empathy and hod to no particular principles. in the hours before his appointment with the guillotine, the murderer meursault achieves the only consolation available to him: convinced of the meaninglessness of all judgment and the essential rightness of his own being, he opens his heart to "the benign indifference of the universe."<br> the book was instrumental in camus’ winning the nobel prize for literature.