The Stranger

TL;DR — Camus’s 1942 novel in Gilbert’s translation — the one that gave English ‘Mother died today.’

Vintage Books edition, translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert, copyright 1942 Librairie Gallimard as L’Étranger.

Meursault’s affectlessness and the absurdist argument it dramatises need no summary. What is worth noting is the translation: Gilbert’s is the version most English readers absorbed, and it is measurably more ornate than Matthew Ward’s 1988 rendering — the famous opening is “Mother died today” here, against Ward’s “Maman died today.” Which one you read changes the book.

Where this came from

• Will Manidis’s “most underrated PDF” thread

77 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.