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The stranger matthew ward7/3/2023 It seems Ward has made conscious changes to other English translations and his changes are informed by his studies of Camus’s other writings. Ward notes that Camus wrote that “the curious feeling the son has for his mother constitutes all his sensibility.” Fitting, then, that the first word in this book would be “maman,” which brings to me a totally different feel than “mother.” Therefore, though I have no credentials, I endorse this translation. For example, he changes the famous first line “Mother died today.” However, I agree with his choice: “Maman died today.” It’s a simple change, but one that I think very much changes the reading. Translator Matthew Ward offers an interesting introduction as to why he would change some of the most famous lines in literature. There I also read this interesting quote: “I do not believe in God and I am not an atheist.” This notion (though I don’t fully understand it), in a sense, introduces some the ideas in The Stranger. Rather than choose this book for its ideas, however, I mainly chose it as my first venture into Camus because it is short and sweet - well, maybe not too sweet, as it turns out. A quick jaunt to Wikipedia revealed to me that he worked to oppose nihilism. Right alongside this ignorance is the fact that I know nothing about Camus, other than the general knowledge that he was an existentialist (thought he disputes this - and whose word are we going to take?) and that he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.
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