Every now and then I have a piece of free time where I ask myself, what should I be doing now? Yesterday I had such a moment, so I went to the library and picked up Albert Camus' "L'Étranger" (I read it in English but decided to keep the original title here). Once called "the best man in France" by Hannah Arendt, I chose Camus because a historian I'm particularly fond of, Tony Judt, wrote about him in a moving and passionate way. I wanted to know more.

The book itself is a slight book, it feels as frail as the story which it contains, that of a man who feels outside of society, in the end condemned for not crying at his mother's funeral. Despite the noir edge which the book has, I enjoyed it for the clear story telling, for the spartan prose which tells you what you need to know, yet no more.

I'd have loved to have read this book in French, but then French is not a language I speak, so the translation will have to do! The question is: how much does a book lose in translation?


Picture: Wikipedia