` My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don`t know.` In The Outsider (1942), his classic existentialist novel, Camus explores the alienation of an individual who refuses to conform to social norms. Meursault, his anti-hero, will not lie. When his mother dies, he refuses to show his emotions simply to satisfy the expectations of others. & when he commits a random act of violence on a sun-drenched beach near Algiers, his lack of remorse compounds his guilt in the eyes of society & the law. Yet he is as much a victim as a criminal. Albert Camus` portrayal of a man confronting the absurd, & revolting against the injustice of society, depicts the paradox of man`s joy in life when faced with the `tender indifference` of the world. Sandra Smith`s translation, based on close listening to a recording of Camus reading his work aloud on French radio in 1954, sensitively renders the subtleties & dream-like atmosphere of L` Etranger. Albert Camus (1913-1960), French novelist, essayist & playwright, is one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. His most famous works include The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), The Plague (1947), The Just (1949), The Rebel (1951) & The Fall (1956). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, & his last novel, The First Man, unfinished at the time of his death, appeared in print for the first time in 1994, & was published in English soon after by Hamish Hamilton. Sandra Smith was born & raised in New York City & is a Fellow of Robinson College, University of Cambridge, where she teaches French Literature & Language. She has won the French American Foundation Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize, as well as the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize.