The Outsider

Meursault leads an apparently unremarkable bachelor life in Algiers until his involvement in a violent incident calls into question the fundamental values of society.

In his classic existentialist novel Camus explores the predicament of the individual who is prepared to face the benign indifference of the universe courageously and alone. In this world, cut off from a sense of God, society has created rules so binding that any person breaking them is condemned as an alien, an outsider. For Meursault it is an insult to his reason and a betrayal of his hopes; for Camus it is the absurdity of life. To him Meursault was not ‘a reject, but a poor and naked man … who, without any heroic pretensions, agrees to die for the truth.”