The Stranger

The first half of The Stranger by Albert Camus read to me like an autobiography of a working class French professional struggling to grasp a strong sense of meaning and resolve in their life. The second half of The Stranger took a bizarre turn into public psychopathologizing and group think, highlighting for readers the absurdity of the public’s desire to assume moral superiority over the inner workings the protagonist’s mind. It’s hard to imagine a 20th century novel with as much of an existential twist as the one developed in this book.