 Recorded Books presents an unabridged recording of The Stranger by Albert Camus in a translation from the French by Matthew Ward, narrated by Jonathan Davis and directed by Greta Byrom. This book is copyrighted 1988 by Alfred A. Knopf, Incorporated. This recording is copyrighted 2005 by Recorded Books. It's published in 1942, and subsequently in English in 1946, The Stranger, or The Stranger, is one of the most influential novels of the 20th century. Camus' celebrated literary debut, championed by the existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, is generally considered the work that best captures the delusion, nihilism and malaise of its time. But it was heavily influenced by the complicated political and social forces at work in Europe during the 1930s. Camus was a left-leaning journalist living in Algiers, campaigning for the rights of Algerians who were, in law but not in fact, equal to their French compatriots. With the rise of fascism and the establishment of autocratic regimes in Germany, Italy, and Spain, the future did not bode well for France, and Camus breathed a political atmosphere thick with pessimism and fear. Indeed, he finished writing The Stranger while France was under German occupation. People are often surprised to hear that the Nazis found nothing untoward in this book and allowed it to be published as written. For many, it very quickly came to be emblematic of the illegitimacy of power, a world without values and of the primacy of the individual. Although forever associated with the philosophy of existentialism, Camus tried later to distance himself from it after breaking with Sartre over political differences. But it is forever with existentialism that Camus and The Stranger would be associated. As he wrote toward the end of his life, a novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. And now The Stranger. Part 1. Chapter 1. Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home. Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours. That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday. The old people's home is at Marengo, about 80 kilometers from Algiers. I'll take the 2 o'clock bus and get there in the afternoon. That way I can be there for the vigil and come back tomorrow night. I asked my boss for 2 days off and there was no way he was going to refuse me with an excuse like that. But he wasn't too happy about it. I even Sample complete. Ready to continue?