Part 1, Chapter 1 Summary

The Stranger is a story about a young man living in Algiers in the 1940s who accidentally kills a man due to the glare of the sun. He is executed for a crime, but not the one that is expected. As the story begins, a young man named Meursault living in Algiers, North Africa, receives news that his mother has died and the funeral is tomorrow. Meursault asks his employer for two days off. He receives permission for time off but feels that the employer shows no sympathy for the situation. Meursault says that it is not his fault that he must leave to bury his own mother.

In order to catch the early afternoon bus to the village where his mother had lived in a retirement home, Meursault quickly eats lunch at his favorite café and borrows a black tie...