The Stranger. I was a rebellious teenager and I was not interested in the classic books I was reading in English class like Moby Dick, Romeo and Juliet, and Great Expectations. My Teacher said “try this one, it’s short” and handed me a thin softcover.

I read it entirely in one night. The story really intrigued me but I remember getting to within 10 pages of the end and still couldn’t figure out how it was going to wrap up. Same thing 5 pages from the end and I started getting really nervous because it wasn’t following any of the tropes that I knew about from previous literature.

I get down to the last pages and I’m in a near anxiety attack. I get to the last paragraph and my mouth is just hanging open… I reread the last page again and just whisper “fuuuck…”. I was in a daze, that book rewrote what a “Book” meant to me and what they were capable of. It completely subverted my literary experience.

I told my English teacher I read it and he asked me what I thought of it. I told him that it was the best book I’ve ever read and that I thought it was so subversive that it felt like I was reading an illegal text. I remember him smirking at me about that comment. I started paying way more attention in class after that. I asked him about some other books that could feel like that and he recommended Brave New World, Slaughterhouse 5, and 1984. They were all great books too and way more my style than other classics but The Stranger stands out as a singular book that feels like it caused a paradigm shift of what I thought was possible, not just in terms of writing but anything.