One possible interpretation is that Mersault is killed because he failed to do what society expected of him at the time of his mother's funeral. Camus doesn't claim to know all the answers, or even all the questions, but he does have the novelist's ability to make you wonder what those questions might be, and to reveal all the complex mess of human psychology. This is no screed setting out the rules of existentialism, or even absurdism. Mersault's story isn't a simply framework for a philosophy, it is something in and of itself. So I should preface this remark by admitting I may be doing Sartre an injustice – but from what I can remember, another big difference between Nausea and The Outsider is a refusal to preach.

My own battle with Camus' frenemy's famous book took place quite a few years ago, and I came out the loser.

It may be plain, but only in the way of a well-turned piece of wood, where the surface is smooth, yet also reveals all the undulations of the grain.Īnyway, anyone who has slogged through Sartre's Nausea will appreciate Camus' qualities as a storyteller. My French isn't up to it, and it's no particular insight to point our that his writing is vivid, and elegant. I set that down both as an insight into his attitude to writing and as a good reason for me to avoid going into a practical criticism-style essay into his prose. The volume in hand further enhaces the value by association, since it bears a bookplate to the front free endpaper 'The Gibralter International Literary Festival and The Folio Society are pleased to present this book as a thank you for speaking at the 2013 Festival.' A great addition to the library of reader, scholar and collector alike, with added interest to an already rarer Edition of this absurdist and existential classic.There's a famous Camus quote that 'saying things badly increases the unhappiness of the world'. Bound in portrait pictorial boards, housed and protected in such great condition by very good original dustwrapper. This volume appears unopened and unread, vey good clean tight sound square, no inscription, well held in joints and hinges. Frontispiece and 6 further full page coloured plate illustrations and pictorial book cover, by the wonderful Matthew Richardson, who tendered for and won the right to illustrate this Special Edition though the House of Illustration and Folio Society's inaugural Book Illustration Competition. Excellent As New, Increasingly Uncommon, Award Winning Edition, Folio Society 2011.

The outsider camus book