50 Fun Facts About The Stranger (Albert Camus)

Which English rock band's debut single, Killing an Arab, is based on Albert Camus's The Stranger?

The Cure put it out in 1978, and the title caused such trouble that Robert Smith later said he wished he had called the song Standing on the Beach.

How did Albert Camus, author of The Stranger, die near the French town of Sens in January 1960?

A car crash killed him instantly at 46, in the passenger seat of his publisher's Facel Vega. The unfinished manuscript of The First Man was found in the wreckage.

Which football position did The Stranger's author Albert Camus play for a junior team in Algiers?

Goalkeeper was his position for Racing Universitaire d'Alger's juniors from 1928 to 1930. Tuberculosis, diagnosed when he was 17, ended any hopes of a football career.

What does Meursault say drove him to shoot a man on the beach in The Stranger, rather than revenge?

The sun is all he can offer when the judge asks for a motive. He means the heat and the glare off the blade that dazed him, but the court hears a man without remorse.

By what method is Meursault sentenced to die for murder at the end of his trial in The Stranger?

The guillotine is his sentence, to be carried out in public, although his own lawyer had told him the punishment would probably be light.

Which honour did Albert Camus receive in 1957, fifteen years after The Stranger was published?

The Nobel Prize in Literature went to Camus at 44, and he dedicated his acceptance speech to Louis Germain, the schoolteacher who had helped him win a scholarship.

After his first shot kills the man on the beach in The Stranger, what does Meursault do next?

He fires four more shots into the motionless body after a pause. That pause is the one detail of the crime the examining magistrate cannot get past.

In the closing lines of The Stranger, what does Meursault hope to find at his execution?

A large, hateful crowd is his final wish, made just after he decides that he has been happy and still is. An outburst at a visitor had emptied him of hope.

Under which title has Camus's The Stranger been sold in Britain since its first English edition?

The Outsider was the London publisher's choice, partly because a Polish novel had just appeared there as The Stranger. The American edition was already typeset, so both titles stuck.

Meursault's employer in The Stranger offers him a post at a new branch office in which city?

Paris leaves him unmoved, and his shrug angers a boss who expected ambition. Meursault recalls having had ambitions as a student, before deciding none of it mattered.

How does news of his mother's death in a country home first reach Meursault in The Stranger?

A telegram from the home brings the news, and his first concern is working out which day she actually died. He then asks his boss for two days' leave.

In which Algerian town does Meursault's mother die in an old people's home in The Stranger?

Marengo lies outside Algiers, and Meursault catches the two o'clock bus there and sleeps for nearly the whole trip. The vigil and the funeral walk fill the opening chapter.

At the old people's home in The Stranger, which offer about his mother does Meursault turn down?

To view the body is an offer he declines twice, first from the caretaker and then from the director. The director brings it up at the trial, along with the lack of tears.

Which drink does Meursault accept from the caretaker at the vigil by the coffin in The Stranger?

Coffee, taken with milk, becomes evidence against him: the prosecutor calls him a disloyal son for not refusing it at his mother's side.

Which basic fact about his mother does Meursault fail to give the undertaker's man in The Stranger?

Her exact age is something he does not know, so he answers vaguely during the procession. The detail resurfaces at his trial as proof of a cold son.

Which old man, teased as the fiancé of Meursault's mother, lags behind her funeral in The Stranger?

Thomas Pérez was her inseparable companion and the only resident of the home allowed to attend. He takes shortcuts to keep up, then faints in the heat.

What job did Marie Cardona once hold at the office where Meursault works in The Stranger?

Typist is how he remembers her, a former colleague he had been attracted to. They meet again swimming the day after the funeral, and she spends that night with him.

Which French comic stars in the film Meursault and Marie see on their first date in The Stranger?

Fernandel was one of France's top comic actors, which is the point: the prosecutor tells the jury that Meursault went to laugh at a comedy the day after burying his mother.

How does Meursault spend the Sunday afternoon after Marie's first night at his flat in The Stranger?

Watching the street below from his balcony takes up the whole afternoon, with cigarettes and food to hand. By evening he concludes that, mother buried or not, nothing has changed.

Which elderly neighbour in The Stranger curses and beats the mangy dog he walks twice a day?

Salamano has come to look like his dog, whose mange has left it as scabby as its master. When the animal runs away, Meursault hears the old man crying at night.

What job does Raymond Sintès claim to do in The Stranger, though neighbours take him for a pimp?

Warehouse guard is his stock reply when anyone asks. Over dinner he asks Meursault to be his friend, then tells of beating the mistress he suspects of cheating.

What does Raymond ask Meursault to write for him over dinner early in The Stranger?

A letter to his mistress is meant to lure her back so that Raymond can humiliate her and throw her out. Meursault agrees, saying he does not mind.

What does the policeman called to Raymond's flat in The Stranger do on hearing he beat a woman?

The officer slaps him in the face and orders him to wait at home for a summons. Raymond then asks Meursault to tell the police that the woman had been unfaithful.

How does Meursault answer in The Stranger when Marie asks whether he wants to marry her?

It makes no difference to him, he says, and he will marry her if she wants. She finds him peculiar and decides she wants to marry him all the same.

In The Stranger, what does the odd woman at Céleste's restaurant tick off in a magazine?

Radio programmes are what she marks so obsessively that Meursault follows her outside. She turns up again among the spectators at his trial.

Why did Meursault's elderly neighbour in The Stranger first get the dog he now mistreats?

His wife had died, and the dog was meant to ease a widower's loneliness. When it goes missing he refuses to replace it, saying he is used to the old one.

What does Meursault take from Raymond on the beach in The Stranger to stop him acting rashly?

A revolver changes hands when Meursault talks Raymond out of shooting two men resting by a spring. It is in his pocket when he walks back there alone.

After Meursault testifies for him to the police in The Stranger, how does Raymond's case end?

With a warning is all it costs Raymond, once Meursault has stated that the woman was unfaithful. The prosecutor later throws that favour back at Meursault.

What does the magistrate wave at Meursault in The Stranger while asking if he believes in God?

A crucifix is waved in his face by a magistrate who says his own life would be meaningless without God. When Meursault says no, the man takes to calling him the Antichrist.

Who visits Meursault's cell against his wishes late in The Stranger and is seized in a rage?

The prison chaplain insists that every condemned man turns to God in the end. Meursault grabs him and shouts that death is the only certainty, and the outburst leaves him calm.

Why do the authorities in The Stranger stop Marie visiting Meursault in prison after a single visit?

They are not married, so the rules allow her nothing more, as she tells him in writing. In the noisy visiting room she had promised they would marry and go swimming again.

In the newspaper story Meursault rereads in jail in The Stranger, who murders the rich traveller?

His mother and sister, innkeepers who fail to recognise him, kill him for his money before he can say who he is. Camus later built his play The Misunderstanding on the same plot.

Which mental exercise helps Meursault pass almost a year in his cell before trial in The Stranger?

Listing objects in his flat, down to the tiniest detail, eats up the hours once he has grown used to confinement. He also sleeps as much as he possibly can.

The Stranger's prosecutor calls Meursault as guilty as the court's next defendant, accused of what?

Killing his father is the charge in the next case, and the prosecutor argues that a son unmoved at his mother's burial paved the way for it. He then asks for the death penalty.

What does Meursault in The Stranger recall his father doing after making himself watch an execution?

Vomiting repeatedly was his reaction, in a story Meursault heard from his mother. Awaiting his own death, Meursault decides an execution is the one thing that should really interest a man.

How does the restaurant owner Céleste, testifying in The Stranger, explain the killing on the beach?

As bad luck is the best he can do for a regular customer he calls a friend. The prosecutor then uses Marie's evidence to show how Meursault spent the weekend after the funeral.

Which Albert Camus essay, published the same year as The Stranger, sets out his idea of the absurd?

The Myth of Sisyphus argues that recognising the absurd calls for revolt, not suicide. Camus treated the essay and the novel as parts of a single cycle of works.

Which philosophical label, often attached to The Stranger, did Albert Camus reject for himself?

Existentialism was a tag he refused throughout his life. He traced his own thinking to the ancient Greeks, Nietzsche and the moralists of the 1600s instead.

Which French philosopher, later Camus's rival, wrote an influential essay explaining The Stranger?

Jean-Paul Sartre's essay drew wide attention to the novel, and the two men became friends. They fell out for good over Camus's later book The Rebel.

Which Albert Camus book, set in the Algerian city of Oran, followed The Stranger in 1947?

The Plague follows a city sealed off by an epidemic. Camus drew on a cholera outbreak that had devastated Oran in 1849 but set his story in the 1940s.

Which French publishing house first issued Camus's The Stranger in 1942, printing only 4,400 copies?

Gallimard dressed up the title pages to suggest eight separate editions, a marketing trick. Camus, ill in Oran, did not see a copy until weeks after publication.

Which French newspaper's 1999 poll of the century's 100 most memorable books put The Stranger first?

Le Monde ran the poll with the retailer Fnac, asking 17,000 French readers which books had stayed in their minds. Camus's novel finished one place ahead of Proust.

Which British scholar, who helped translate Joyce's Ulysses, first put The Stranger into English?

Stuart Gilbert's version stood as the standard English text for more than 30 years, though later scholars faulted it for distorting the tone of Camus's plain French.

Which Algerian writer's 2013 novel retells The Stranger through the eyes of the dead man's brother?

Kamel Daoud gave Camus's nameless victim a name and a grieving family in The Meursault Investigation, which won the Goncourt prize for a first novel.

Which actor played Meursault in Luchino Visconti's 1967 film of The Stranger?

Marcello Mastroianni took the part after Alain Delon had first been announced for it. Anna Karina played Marie.

Which French director's 2025 film of The Stranger, starring Benjamin Voisin, premiered at Venice?

François Ozon shot the film in Morocco, and it became the third screen version of the novel. Pierre Lottin won the César for Best Supporting Actor for it.

Which play did Albert Camus place beside The Stranger in what he called his cycle of the absurd?

Caligula completed a set of three: Camus planned each of his cycles as a novel, an essay and a play on one theme. The second cycle turned from the absurd to revolt.

Which Camus work, a forerunner of The Stranger unpublished until 1971, stars a Patrice Mersault?

A Happy Death was written between 1936 and 1938 and then put away. It appeared more than eleven years after the author's death.

From which narrative point of view does Albert Camus tell the whole story of The Stranger?

First person narration keeps every event in Meursault's own detached voice, both before and after the killing that splits the book into its two parts.

During which period of French history did The Stranger first go on sale, uncut by the censors?

The German occupation did not stop the book: it went on sale in 1942 without cuts by the Propaganda-Staffel. An officer in the censorship bureau had even offered to help.