There are literary classics. And there are great literary classics. “The Outsider” by Albert Camus belongs to the later group.
Albert was born in Algeria in 1913. He came from a proletariat colonist French family. His interest in literature and philosophy started when he was really young and his teachers encouraged him to write in view of his early talent. In 1932 he publishes his first texts, joins the Communist Party and focus his carreer in the political journalism. After some discrepancies with the party, he retires from political movement and starts writing theatre plays and essays. And that time is the magnificent one for Albert in relation to his creativity.
He had the power of defining the man’s prototype after the Second World War. A man with a serious lack of hope, of feelings, holder of a total apathy. A numb being. And that is the main character of “The Outsider”. A man who has no moral, who did not know how to “feel”. The story is about the vicissitudes of this man’s life. A monotonous one that is interrupted after a success in which he is involved in. A short story, not so many words, easy-reading. Sometimes it is so difficult to tell us something in such a direct and powerful way in a few words. Only great writers do that. And Camus is the king of the kings in this discipline.
Albert Camus has so many other important publications as “Le mythe de Sisyphe”, “La mort hereuse” or “Les justes” . All of them full of moral, existentialism and criticism to the human behaviour.
In 1957 he received a Nobel Prize for Literature, and died three years later in a car accident.
Do not miss this classic. You will not regret having read it.
