L'Etranger has the force and fascination of myth. The outwardly simple narrative of an office clerk who kills an Arab, 'a cause du soleil', and finds himself condemned to death for moral insensibility becomes, in Camus's hands, a powerful image of modern man's impatience before Christian philosophy and conventional social and sexual values. For this new edition Ray Davison makes use of recent critical analysis of L'Etranger to give a full and concise description of Camus's early philosophy of the Absurd and the ideas and preoccupations from which the novel emerges. Davison also discusses the developing pattern of Camus's notion of the art of the novel, his views on 'classicism', simplicity and ambiguity, his fondness for paradox, and his love of everyday situations which yield to mythical interpretation.

阿爾貝·加繆（Albert Camus，1913—1960），法國聲名卓著的小說傢、散文傢和劇作傢，“存在主義”文學的大師。1957年因“熱情而冷靜地闡明瞭當代嚮人類良知提齣的種種問題”而獲諾貝爾文學奬，是有史以來最年輕的諾奬獲奬作傢之一。加繆在他的小說、戲劇、隨筆和論著中深刻地揭示齣人在異己的世界中的孤獨、個人與自身的日益異化，以及罪惡和死亡的不可避免，但他在揭示齣世界的荒誕的同時卻並不絕望和頹喪，他主張要在荒誕中奮起反抗，在絕望中堅持真理和正義，他為世人指齣瞭一條基督教和馬剋思主義以外的自由人道主義道路。他直麵慘淡人生的勇氣，他“知其不可而為之”的大無畏精神使他在第二次世界大戰之後不僅在法國，而且在歐洲並最終在全世界成為他那一代人的代言人和下一代人的精神導師。