The Stranger - Minumsa World Literature Collection 266

Author Albert Camus · Publisher Minumsa · Publication Date 2019-09-18 · ISBN 9788937443848

About the Book

■ The world's best-selling classic, elevated to the status of myth

According to statistics from Gallimard publishing house in Paris, "The Stranger" has sold over 7.33 million copies in France alone and boasts an average annual sale of 190,000 copies. This makes it the best-selling book in Gallimard's century-long history since its establishment. "The Stranger" has been translated into a staggering 101 languages worldwide.
"The Stranger," both as a work in itself and in the history of 20th-century narrative forms, occupies a unique position and was a literary "event" from the moment of its publication. Roland Barthes condensed this short novel into an event comparable to "the invention of the dry cell battery." Gaëtan Picon lauded it, saying, "It elevated an exquisitely modern sensibility into a nearly perfect classical form." Emmanuel Mounier pointed out, "This author, classical to the bone, that is to say, aiming for a deliberate, ordered, and unadorned style, almost puritanical in its pursuit, harbors the pain and darkness of division within." In 1945, Sartre, synthesizing all these evaluations while penetrating the value of this work, left the following prophetic words:

"It is entirely possible to discern the main characteristics of future French literature in Camus's dark and pure work. His work promises us a classical literature. It offers no illusions but is filled with belief in the greatness of humanity, is harsh but excludes unnecessary violence, and is passionate but restrained."

■ Life and Death, an Absurd World
—Meursault, a martyr who refuses to be a hero yet doesn't hesitate to die for truth

Meursault, a young man working as a shipping clerk in Algiers, receives a telegram one day informing him of his mother's death at a nursing home in Marengo. He attends the funeral and returns. He reunites with Marie, a former colleague, and they enjoy a cheerful movie, swim in the sea, and make love. Meursault, who has few acquaintances, befriends Raymond, a neighbor in his apartment building. Raymond devises a plan to harass his unfaithful girlfriend, and Meursault, swayed by Raymond's intention, participates in this plan. Days later, Meursault goes to the beach with Raymond and encounters Arabs who had been following them. Among these Arabs is the brother of Raymond's former girlfriend. A fight breaks out, Raymond gets hurt, and the commotion ends, but Meursault feels stifled and goes to a cool spring. There, Meursault accidentally meets the Arab who had stabbed Raymond, and stimulated by the intense light of the knife the Arab draws, Meursault inadvertently pulls the trigger of the pistol he has.
Despite being educated, Meursault, who lacks ambition for social climbing or a desire for changes in his life, and is oddly "indifferent" to his surroundings, becomes a "stranger" in the world after the accidental murder. Neither the lawyer who distorts the truth to help him, nor the judge who tries to enlighten Meursault through God, nor the priest who visits him for salvation—none of them truly understand Meursault, and Meursault, in turn, cannot understand the world around him. Thus, Meursault becomes alienated from his own case. "The rejection of death, which seems absurd, the strangeness he feels about himself, as if cast out of his own being, and the opaque darkness of this world—the absurd is entirely contained herein."
Thus, receiving a death sentence imposed by others, Meursault shakes off the final temptation, the temptation of faith and salvation, and confronts his own death directly.

■ A completely revised edition by Korea's top French literature translator, Professor Emeritus Kim Hwa-young of Korea University

"The Stranger," considered one of the greatest classics in France, was first introduced to Korea in 1953, the year the Korean War ended in an armistice, and its original price was 700 hwan. At that time, this short novel, which arrived with "existentialist" philosophy amidst the material and spiritual devastation of the post-war period, placed Korean readers before the fundamental question of "how to live?"
Professor Kim Hwa-young, selected as Korea's top French literature translator in 1999, revealed in his commentary on the work that this novel, which he "first read at the age of fifteen without understanding a thing," has "consistently accompanied my life like destiny." Having first translated "The Stranger" two decades ago, Professor Kim Hwa-young extensively revised the work for its inclusion in the Minumsa World Literature Collection, practically "re-translating it." He not only consistently matched the author's deliberately differentiated expressions of "엄마 (eomma, mom)" and "어머니 (eomeoni, mother)" to the original text, more appropriately conveying the speaker's feelings, but also "strived to maximize" the nuance of free indirect discourse and "corrected mistranslations and awkward expressions." Furthermore, he "adjusted outdated rhetoric to contemporary linguistic conventions" while retaining "The Stranger's unique style" intact.
Having reread and taught this novel with students in his lectures for decades, and now releasing a new translation, Professor Kim Hwa-young, who felt "a new sensation, as if reading it for the first time," will surely offer a profound impression not only to readers encountering "The Stranger" for the first time today but also to those who have met it before.

Table of Contents

Part 1
Part 2

'A Letter on The Stranger' - Albert Camus
American Foreword - Albert Camus
Rereading 'The Stranger' - Roger Quilliot

Work Commentary - Kim Hwa-young
Author's Chronology