What makes the strength of this novel is of course that addresses one of the key questions of philosophy: Does life has meaning? But the most interesting is perhaps the way he treats. Indeed, not only Camus beautifully reflects the absence in the world of his narrator by using a white, neutral language that kill in the bud any emotion, right from the first page of the book where Meursault reports the death of his mother with all the coldness of a record. But moreover his story in the form of a diptych whose two flaps meet like two perfectly symmetrical mirrors. The second part of "The stranger" takes effect in one by one the events narrated in the first and replays them in the light of common morality which here takes the threatening aspect of a criminal court.
At times, this book reminds me a little "Erostrate" Sartre. I also hear echoes of "Trial" by Kafka. Sometimes I even sometimes to see behind the silhouette of the Meursault, stealth, of Lafcadio Gide. But the work of Camus has its own coherence and, contrary to what some claim, is not nihilistic nothing. This is actually a double finding of a warning. Life in itself is meaningless, says Camus, so it's up to us to give him one, otherwise, we too will become of Meursault, strangers in the world.
Ultimately very humanist message that both the greatness of this book and of its author.
