The first American edition of The Stranger published by Knopf in 1946

In case you missed it, last week was the 69th anniversary of the publication of The Stranger by Albert Camus. In his Daybook column for the Barnes and Noble Review, Steve King points out the similarities between The Stranger and the old Humphrey Bogart film Casablanca.

In the film, Rick (Bogart’s character) strives to be neutral politically but he is eventually forced to take sides when he helps his ex-wife Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and her husband Victor (Paul Henreid) escape the Nazis.

As it happens, Camus was a member of the French-Algerian resistance to the Nazis during World War II and, as such, he similarly worked to help Jews and others fleeing the Nazis escape to safer territory.

And as King notes, like Ilsa and Victor hopping a plane from Casablanca to Lisbon, Camus’ literary work managed to escape in a similar fashion:

The more remarkable parallel is that The Stranger also managed to slip by the Nazis. With the paper shortage, getting a book published in France during World War II was difficult enough; getting clearance from the Propaganda Ministry was an even larger obstacle. The Nazis of 1942 were not the avid burners of a decade earlier, but the prohibitions were systematic and effective: nothing against Hitler and Homeland, nothing for Jews, nothing subversive or, in Nazi Newspeak, “inflammatory.” That the watchdogs of totalitarianism should judge The Stranger to be harmlessly apolitical may be one of the larger ironies in the history of publishing and censorship. The novel has become one of the 20th century’s most famous arguments, if not anthems, against the compulsions of state and society.

So to all you high schoolers reading The Stranger for the first time in some AP class wondering why the hell this book is important, there’s some context for you. But if you need more inspiration, you can look a bit forward in history to the following Cure song inspired by the book.

The Cure – Killing An Arab by Ms. Butcher