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Short and readable, this unusual story explores a state of mind unlike what one ordinarily encounters. The thought-provoking tale keeps readers asking why Mersault, the protagonist, thinks and acts so differently from other people.

The story builds up around a fictional crime that occurs during World War II in the city of Algiers. Mersault seems unaware of either his freedom to choose or his responsibility for those choices. An existential link holds the two states together: There can be no freedom without responsibility, and vice versa.

The story as a whole is more about alienation than what Mersault actually does. Not even late in the tale during a priest's visit does Camus entertain any reflection on right and wrong. The visit, one finds, concerns the priest's own detachment from his fellow beings. One quality of this alienation, it can be seen, is the absurd consequences for a man of a perfectly truthful disposition.

I give the book high marks for philosophical insight and lower marks for the authors style. His style I found truncated and uninspiring, but its typical of books of the era and this modernism does have its fans.