'My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I do not 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. And 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 and the law. He is as much a victim as a criminal. Albert Camus' portrayal of a man confronting the absurd, and revolving against the injustice of society, depicts the paradox of man's life when faced with the 'tender indifference' of the world. Sandra Smith's translation, Based on a recording of a recording of Camus reading his work on the French radio in 1954, a sensitive renders of the subtleties and dream-like atmosphere of L'Etranger. Albert Camus (1913-1960), French novelist, essayist and 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) and The Fall (1956). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, and his last novel, The First Man, unfinished at the time of his death in 1994, and published in English soon after by Hamish Hamilton. Sandra Smith was born and raised in New York City and is a Fellow of Robinson College, University of Cambridge, where she teaches French Literature and Language.