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| The Outsider (Essential Penguin) | 
 enlarge | Author: Albert Camus
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy Used: £2.95
You Save: £6.04 (67%)
New (21) from £3.56
Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 110516
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7 x 4.2 x 0.2
ISBN: 0140274170
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140274172
ASIN: 0140274170
Publication Date: February 25, 1999
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Do yourself August 20, 2007
3 out of 8 found this review helpful
I read The Outsider by chance,Maybe it attracted me by the novel's name.
"My mother died today...or maybe yesterday,I don't kown? "The Outsider begins with this statement.This is also the first action that Meursault hears the news of his mother's death.It makes me chilling.At the funeral I can't find any sadness from Meursault's expression and actions, ,he even doesn't know when someone ask him for his mother's age .Once returned from the funeral he meets girls ,sees funny movies and starts a relationship with the girl,Marie.When I read this paragraph I think he is very cool and ruthless!But after reading the whole novel I don't think so,I am sure Meursault loves his mother in his own way.In this world most of people have two faces ,what they are doing isn't what they really desire but to designedly cater for others.Meusault is very honest ,he simply refuses to lie and never gives up his belief,No matter how heavily the society comes down on him,he insists on his faith in what he thinks and believes.I like this man.
What Camus wanted to express by this book also was the loneliness when someone in the face of the world. Nowadays material desires dominate the world ,many people feel lonely and easily lose themselves, Read the Outsider,Maybe this novel can make you calm!
I usually bethink Meursault stands at the high loft and overlooks the world like Zeus.he is not only the oursider but also stander-by,when being at sea I like overlooking the world as Meursault......
 `A familiar journey under a summer sky could as easily end in prison as in innocent sleep.' June 21, 2007
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
Camus wrote this short, sharp, perfect work out of his philosophical writing of the same year, The Myth of Sisyphus. Reading them together is the best way of understanding both Camus' thought and Meursault (The Outsider's protagonist), as Meursault exemplifies and develops many threads from the earlier essay.
Camus writes The Outsider in terse sentences, moving the story along on bare facts at times; "I caught the two o'clock bus. It was very hot. I ate at Celeste's restaurant, as usual. They all felt very sorry for me, and Celeste said, `There's no-one like a mother.'" And although delivered in first person, Meursault rarely indulges us in accounts of his feelings or reflections. Here though, a reading of the Sisyphus helps:
"This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers."
Camus was adamant we should not delude ourselves about our lives, or, and what amounted to worse, wish for another life (whether in the world or with a God). He called on us to regard "the implacable grandeur of this life"; through the dirty Christ of Meursault (in Camus' words, "the only Christ we deserve") and the elegiac beauty he manages so succinctly to evoke of Algiers, he draws out that grandeur.
Meursault can seem a difficult figure, but whatever you think of his morals (if he has any, I doubt it) or his attitude, it cannot be denied that he remains true to himself. And this "ridiculous fidelity" is what makes Meursault so admirable in the face of the pretence and premeditation of the world around him. He will not lie, he will not play the game, and for that, society (ie, the state) rejects him out of hand, inexorably. As Camus expounds in the Sisyphus, whatever cannot be understood requires thought, but to think is to be undermined, and that is something which the state, the power, and the people who base their identity upon its privileged position can never allow.
A brilliant book. Go read it many times.
 A Killing On The Beach December 21, 2006
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Purportedly written to examine what might become of a man if he never told a lie, it is no fabrication to say that Camus's short existentialist novel has stood the test of time.
Meursault is untroubled by his mother's death, unimpressed by the advances of a pretty girl, and stone cold to the idea of career advancement. When he remorselessly pulls the trigger he has finally broken every law, written or unspoken, that society holds. As the ultimate outsider he must face his sentence alone.
Camus's curt style (possibly aided by the translation) perfectly captures his anti-hero's hard, indifferent stance to the world.
excellent December 18, 2006
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a superb translation. L'etranger is one of my all time favorites and this really does it justice.
Outside the Inside December 15, 2006
3 out of 17 found this review helpful
My gnomic title is much to ponder regarding this existential book. Existential means to do with existing and this book is to do with the existence of the lead character who is basically an outsider. Read it and think.
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