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The Stranger

Albert Camus

Why we're reading this: Amazing book! It deals with issues of determinism and absurdity. Jaw-dropping ending.
[close] Amazing book! It deals with issues of determinism and absurdity. Jaw-dropping ending.

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Jan 04, 2009 Judy rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: my-2008-books, audiobooks

I found this to be a very bizarre story. I guess I don't really appreciate the existentialist style. The character of Meursault is very unreal to me, and I couldn't relate.

From Wikipedia:
"The Stranger, The Outsider, (L’Étranger) (1942), by Albert Camus, is one of the most famous French novels of the twentieth century and is among the best literary expositions of the absurdity of human existence in an indifferent universe. Philosophically, it is an existential novel, despite Camus not considering ...more

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Jul 13, 2009 Kiri rated it really liked it

Listening to this on CD. Wow. Going back to the classics pays off; what a thought-provoking book, and how fortunate for me that the CD version included a discussion with "existentialism scholar Professor Martin Stone".

Fascinating to consider what kind of person Meursault is, and how his viewpoint and way of thinking differs from the human norm... but that isn't really the point, rather a vehicle for the central message. I embrace the concept that the very absurdity of life is what makes it worth ...more

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