‘The sky seemed to rip apart from end to end to pour fire down upon me’.
Mersault will not conform. When his mother dies, he refuses to show his emotions simply to satisfy the expectations of others. And when he commits a random act of violence on a sun-drenched beach, his lack of remorse only compounds his guilt in the eyes of society and the law.
Albert Camus’ portrayal of a man confronting the absurdity of human life became an existentialist classic. Yet it is also a dreamlike, sensual book filled with quiet joy in the ‘tender indifference’ of the physical world.
‘One of those books that marks a reader’s life indelibly’ – William Boyd
