Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic

Looking for The Stranger: Albert Camus and the Life of a Literary Classic

The Stranger is a rite of passage for readers around the world. Since its publication in France in 1942, Camus’s novel has been translated into sixty languages and sold more than six million copies. It’s the rare novel that’s as at likely to be found in a teen’s backpack as in a graduate philosophy seminar. If the twentieth century produced a novel that could be called ubiquitous, The Stranger is it.   How did a young man in his twenties who had never written a novel turn out a masterpiece that still grips readers more than seventy years later? With Looking for “The Stranger” , Alice Kaplan tells that story. In the process, she reveals Camus’s achievement to have been even more impressive—and more unlikely—than even his most devoted readers knew.   Born in poverty in colonial Algeria, Camus started out as a journalist covering the criminal courts. The murder trials he attended, Kaplan shows, would be a major influence on the development and themes of The Stranger . She follows Camus to France, and, making deft use of his diaries and letters, re-creates his lonely struggle with the novel in Montmartre, where he finally hit upon the unforgettable first-person voice that enabled him to break through and complete The Stranger .   Even then, the book’s publication was far from certain. France was straining under German occupation, Camus’s closest mentor was unsure of the book’s merit, and Camus himself was suffering from near-fatal tuberculosis. Yet the book did appear, thanks in part to a resourceful publisher, Gaston Gallimard, who was undeterred by paper shortages and Nazi censorship.     The initial critical reception of The Stranger was mixed, and it wasn’t until after liberation that The Stranger began its meteoric rise. As France and the rest of the world began to move out of the shadow of war, Kaplan shows, Camus’s book— with the help of an aggressive marketing campaign by Knopf for their 1946 publication of the first English translation—became a critical and commercial success, and Camus found himself one of the most famous writers in the world. Suddenly, his seemingly modest tale of alienation was being seen for what it really was: a powerful parable of the absurd, an existentialist masterpiece.   Few books inspire devotion and excitement the way The Stranger does. And it couldn’t have a better biographer than Alice Kaplan, whose books about twentieth-century French culture and history have won her legions of fans. No reader of Camus will want to miss this brilliant exploration.   "To this new project, Kaplan brings equally honed skills as a historian, literary critic, and biographer. . . . In an epilogue, Ms. Kaplan goes a step further and looks for the identity of the Arab involved in the real-life altercation that inspired the novel's pivotal scene. What she learns about him is fascinating, and how she writes about parallels between him and Camus is a lovely example of her own imaginative powers and stylish prose. . . . Reading The Stranger is a bracing but somewhat bloodless experience. Ms. Kaplan has hung warm flesh on its steely bones." -- John Williams ― New York Times A New York Times Notable Book ― New York Times "Fascinating. . . . Engrossing." ― Library Journal, starred review "A first-rate acount, rich in intriguing details." ― Weekly Standard "An absorbing account of the making of The Stranger . For American readers, few French novels are better known, and few scholars are better qualified than Kaplan to reintroduce us to it. The author of several fine biographies of French and American writers, as well as the ravishing memoir French Lessons , Kaplan here sets herself the task of writing a biography of a book. . . . Kaplan tells this story with great verve and insight, all the while preserving the mystery of its creation and elusiveness of its meaning. . . . While some might question Kaplan’s claim that the novel 'changed the course of modern literature' few will ever question either the work's perennial appeal or the brilliance with which Kaplan has told its story." -- Robert Zaretsky ― Los Angeles Review of Books "Kaplan's research is exhaustive (she includes an extensive bibliography), her tone is conversational, and her analyses convincing and often surprising. . . . Kaplan is a superb storyteller. One of the best chapters of the book, 'Gallimard's War', reads like a philosophical thriller with its Nazi censors, misunderstandings, and moral conundrums. Yet, through all this she never loses focus on the novel to which her book is dedicated. . . .  Equally engaging are her chapters documenting the initial reception of the book in both the French- and English-speaking world. . . . Surely destined to become the quintessential companion to Camus's most enduring novel." ― PopMatters "The fascinating story behind Albert Camus' coldblooded masterpiece. . . . A swiftly told, deeply researched literary investigation. . . . While she doesn't offer an