Meursault, a young Algerian pied-noir, hears news of his mother's death. He receives this news with mild annoyance. He must now ask his boss for two days leave to attend the funeral. It is the custom, where he is from, for the bereaved to sit all night in vigil by the coffin of their departed loved one. At the vigil and at the funeral the following day he shows no grief, sadness or even regret. He only feels the physical inconvenience of the vigil and the heat of the sun during the funeral procession to the cemetery. At the funeral he makes mental notes of the physical objects that strike his eye; shining screws in the walnut coffin, the colours on the dresses of the nurses and the large bellies of the elderly mourners.
The following day, back in Algiers , Meursault goes swimming in the sea and meets a girl, Marie, whom he knows vaguely. That evening they go to the cinema together to see a comedy, afterwards they go back to Meursault's and have sex. A relationship, of sorts, develops during which Meursault shows no more feeling or affection towards Marie than his displayed at his mother's funeral. One day she asks Meursault to marry her and he accepts advising her that it's all the same to him whether they marry or not.
He works in an office in Algiers , taking little interest in his career and receiving with disinterest the news of a prospective promotion and the transfer to Paris that accompanied such a rise in position. He is more interested in the physical sensations to be found at work. He enjoys feeling the cool freshness of the hand-towels at mid-day and comparing this feeling to the warm clamminess of the same towels by the end of the day.
At home, as well as his relationship with Marie, he develops a relationship with his unsavoury neighbour, Raymond Sintes, a gangster who beats his girlfriend. Meursault is as disinterested in the friendship with Sintes and he is with his romance with Marie. One day, this friendship leads him to a beach where he kills an Arab with five shots of Sintes' revolver. The two men had come across the Arab and his friends earlier in the day and a fight had broken out, one of the Arabs had a knife. Later on Meursault is walking alone on the beach and comes across one of the Arabs. Meursault has Sintes' gun. The sun on his head and the flash on that sun on the blade of the Arab's knife somehow results in Meursault killing the man with a single shot and then firing four more bullets into the inert body. So ends the first part of the book.
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