The Stranger

Set in French Algeria, Albert Camus's first published novel is narrated by Meursault, an ordinary office worker who shows little feeling at his mother's funeral. Back in Algiers he begins an affair with Marie, a former secretary at his firm, and helps his neighbor Raymond with a scheme against a mistress, meeting each request with the same detachment. Camus used it to examine what he saw as humanity standing naked before the absurd. Le Monde ranked it first on its list of the 100 Books of the 20th Century, and it has been adapted for film three times.

David Heinemeier Hansson called it a key novel of existentialism and the absurd, praising its striking first-person voice and direct language about feeling cut off from society and its norms.