The Stranger

Albert Camus's 1942 novel — about Meursault, the emotionally detached Algerian who kills an Arab and is condemned as much for his lack of grief at his mother's death as for the murder — the defining absurdist novel.

Creates the absurdist novel — The Stranger's Meursault (who refuses to perform expected emotions and therefore becomes incomprehensible to society) embodies Camus's absurdist argument: society's need for narrative and emotional coherence, when confronted with someone who refuses to provide them, becomes indistinguishable from violence.