Currently reading
The Good Soldier
Granta 7: Best of Young British Novelists
Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy
Bamboo
Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe
HHhH
Richer Than God: Manchester City, Modern Football and Growing Up
One Summer: America, 1927
Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South
The Stranger
This was notionally a re-read, having read it (kinda sorta) in the original French and subsequently in the 1982 Joseph Laredo Penguin Modern Classics translation (titled The Outsider in that edition) as a 17 year-old French 'A' Level student.As 16 years have elapsed since then if I'm honest I could only recall the principal plot points, but nonetheless this was "One of those books that marks a reader's life indelibly", as William Boyd put it and I subsequently read Camus' other major works.I had read that Matthew Ward's 1988 translation, published by Vintage in the USA was a more faithful translation both in word and deed, being Americanized. A trip to New York provided the perfect opportunity to pick a copy up for a re-read.Of course it's impossible to say objectively whether this is a better translation without comparing the two (ideally with a French copy to hand) - but it certainly had lost none of its force for me - and arguably even gained some from its increased directness, hence I'm awarding an extra star.
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