The Stranger: A New Translation by Matthew Ward by Albert Camus, Matthew Ward (Translator)

Synopsis

Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." First published in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward.

Annotation

"Matthew Ward has done Camus and us a great service. This is now a different and better novel for its American readers."--Chicago Sun Times

Library Journal

The new translation of Camus's classic is a cultural event; the translation of Cocteau's diary is a literary event. Both translations are superb, but Ward's will affect a naturalized narrative, while Browner's will strengthen Cocteau's reemerging critical standing. Since 1946 untold thousands of American students have read a broadly interpretative, albeit beautifully crafted British Stranger . Such readers have closed Part I on ``door of undoing'' and Part II on ``howls of execration.'' Now with the domestications pruned away from the text, students will be as close to the original as another language will allow: ``door of unhappiness'' and ``cries of hate.'' Browner has no need to ``write-over'' another translation. With Cocteau's reputation chiefly as a cineaste until recently, he has been read in French or not at all. Further, the essay puts a translator under less pressure to normalize for readers' expectations. Both translations show the current trend to stay closer to the original. Marilyn Gaddis Rose, SUNY at Binghamton

Biography

Born in Algeria in 1913, Albert Camus published The Stranger–now one of the most widely read novels of this century–in 1942. Celebrated in intellectual circles, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.