Meursault, an Algerian clerk, kills an Arab on a beach and is condemned less for the murder than for his failure to cry at his mother's funeral. Camus wrote this during the German occupation of France, and the prose has a sun-bleached flatness that mimics Meursault's emotional detachment. The novel made existentialism famous, though Camus rejected the label. The indifference of the universe; the absurdity of human systems; the honesty of refusing to pretend: these themes feel as urgent now as they did then. The sun was in his eyes. The truth does not save him.