bWith the intrigue of a psychological thriller, iThe Strangeri--Camus's masterpiece--gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. With an Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie translated by Matthew Ward.b pBehind the subterfuge, Camus explores what he termed the nakedness of man faced with the absurd and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. piThe Strangeri is a strikingly modern text and Matthew Ward's translation will enable readers to appreciate why Camus's stoical anti-hero and shydevious narrator remains one of the key expressions of a postwar Western malaise, and one of the cleverest exponents of a literature of ambiguity. --from the Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie pFirst published in 1946 now in translation by Matthew Ward.