L'Étranger (1942) is one of the most-read novels of the twentieth century, and it begins with one of the most discussed opening sentences in world literature: "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas." Every English translator must decide what to do with that sentence — and the choices ripple through everything that follows. The first English translation, by Stuart Gilbert in 1946, opened with "Mother died today" — domesticated, unambiguous, slightly formal. Matthew Ward's 1988 Vintage translation opened with "Maman died today" — retaining the French word and with it Meursault's peculiar emotional register, neither child nor adult, neither grieving nor indifferent. The debate between these two approaches tells you most of what you need to know about the novel's central problem: how to render a narrator whose affectlessness is moral, not merely stylistic.
The novel follows Meursault, a French Algerian man who attends his mother's funeral without apparent grief, begins a casual relationship with a woman, becomes involved in a neighbor's petty violence, and kills an Arab man on the beach under the Algerian sun in a scene of dreamlike unreality. In the second half, on trial for murder, he discovers that he is being judged not for the killing but for his failure to cry at his mother's funeral — for his refusal to perform grief, love, and social feeling in the ways his society requires. Camus, who had been developing his philosophy of the absurd, understood Meursault as a figure who is honest about the indifference of the universe in ways that society cannot forgive.
Stuart Gilbert's translation, while historically important, is out of print as a new purchase in the US and best encountered in libraries or used copies. The two translations below are the ones currently available: Matthew Ward's, which is the standard American edition and the version most readers and teachers use; and Sandra Smith's Penguin Modern Classics version, published under the UK title The Outsider, which takes its own view of Camus's French. Matthew Ward's translation is this guide's primary recommendation.
The Stranger — trans. Matthew Ward (1988)
Vintage International — the current standard American translation, the "Maman died today" version
Matthew Ward's 1988 Vintage International translation has been the dominant English-language Stranger for nearly four decades, and it deserves its authority. Ward's crucial decision — to keep "Maman" in the opening sentence rather than translating it as "Mother" — set the tone for a translation that takes Camus's emotional ambiguity seriously. Meursault in Ward's version is neither coldly distant nor warmly accessible; he uses the language of a particular time and place (French Algeria, the 1940s) and Ward doesn't pretend otherwise. The translation is clean, readable, and carefully calibrated to the novel's deadpan style without flattening it. Ward's prose captures the famous quality of Meursault's narration: the way he reports events with the same detachment whether he is describing the sea or a shooting. This is the version used in most American university courses and the one most English-language readers and critics are implicitly citing when they discuss the novel. For a first reading or for anyone who wants the translation with the richest critical conversation around it, Ward is the obvious choice. The Vintage International paperback is inexpensive and widely available.
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The Outsider — trans. Sandra Smith (2012)
Penguin Modern Classics — the UK title and a fresh reading of Camus's French, with a different emphasis
Sandra Smith's 2012 Penguin Modern Classics translation is published in the UK under the title The Outsider — itself a translation decision. Where "The Stranger" emphasises foreignness (someone unknown, perhaps threatening), "The Outsider" emphasises exclusion and alienation. Both are defensible renderings of "L'Étranger," and the different titles indicate different readings of who Meursault is and why he matters. Smith's translation opens: "My mother died today" — a choice that sits between Gilbert's "Mother died today" and Ward's "Maman died today," adding the personal pronoun that Camus omitted and losing the French word that Ward preserved. What Smith gains is a slight softening that some readers find closer to how an ordinary person might actually speak; what she loses is some of the calculated strangeness of the original. Throughout the novel, Smith's prose is somewhat more natural and fluent than Ward's, which occasionally reads as deliberate and slightly distancing. Whether that naturalness is an advantage depends on how you read the novel: some critics argue that Meursault's prose should feel effortful and strange; others that it should feel transparent. Smith's translation is for readers who want to encounter the story with fresh eyes, without the weight of decades of critical discussion of Ward's choices, and for readers in the UK where this is the standard edition.
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