L’Étranger by Albert Camus

Mama died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow.”
The book opens up with these bold lines.

This book tells us the story of a man who believes life has no purpose. You go from one day to another for no reason since everyone is going to die eventually. It’s just the matter of now or later. He views the world differently, which leads him into trouble. The book explores two ideas of modern philosophy that is existentialism and absurdism.

I love Albert Camus’s version of existentialism. He questions life but doesn’t reject it completely.
‘The Stranger’ is translated by Matthew Ward and ‘The Outsider’ by Sandra Smith. It’s the same book with different title and translators.
I loved both the translations.

Some of my favourite quotes from the book are –

“Have you no hope at all? And do you live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?” “Yes,” I said.”

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference to the world.”

“For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”

“I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored.”