📙 The Outsider

(Albert Camus | 1913–1960)

Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

The laconic masterpiece — The Outsider — by Albert Camus is about a Frenchman who murders an Arab in colonial Algeria. The work is famous for the way it diagnoses the state of alienation and spiritual exhaustion which sociologists sat summed up the mood of mid-twentieth century Europe. To this day, the book continues to be relevant and remains one of the most widely read and influential works of the 20th century.

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer

Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He was also a philosopher and journalist.

His other notable works include:

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

* The Rebel is a philosophical exploration of the idea of ‘rebellion’ that ooks at artistic and political rebels throughout history, from Epicurus to the Marquis de Sade.

** The Myth of Sisyphus is a summation of the existentialist philosophy threaded throughout all of his other writing. Camus poses the fundamental question: is life worth living? If human existence holds no significance, what can keep us from suicide? As Camus argues, if there is no God to give meaning to our lives, humans must take on that purpose themselves. This is our ‘absurd’ task, like Sisyphus forever rolling his rock up a hill, as the inevitability of death constantly overshadows us.