Albert Camus' laconic masterpiece about a Frenchman who murders an Arab in
colonial Algeria is famous in its time for diagnosing a state of alienation
and spiritual exhaustion which summed up the mood of the mid-twentieth
century. Today, more than fifty years after its first appearance, we can
see that this early success was no passing fashion: The Outsider continues
to speak to us of ultimate things with the force of a parable and the
excitement of a thriller and remains one of the most widely read and
influential classics of the century.