Book: The Meursault Investigation
Author: Kamel Daoud
Reviewer: Bachir Mihoubi, founder and managing director of FranCounsel Group
Last year, although I had many unanswered questions, I still recommended Albert Camus’ 1942 classic The Stranger. One of the many questions I struggled with had to do with the fact that Camus used the word “Arab” twenty-five times without naming or describing the person behind the moniker. The book I am recommending this year may answer that and many other questions.
The Meursault Investigation – one of Time Magazine’s Top Ten Books of 2015 and Financial Times’ Best Books of the Year – is a very creative take on Camus’ The Stranger. It is written from the perspective of the brother of the “Arab” killed by Meursault, Camus’ anti-hero. The author, Kamel Daoud, gives the Arab a name, a family, and a context that not only reassesses Camus’ novel, but uses it as a platform to explain the present malaise of post-colonial Algeria. It is more than a deconstruction of Camus’ novel; it is an original story in it’s own right. It gives a thought-provoking analysis of the troubled decades of the French-Algerian history and the legacy of colonialism, which still resonates today.
Kamel Dauod is an Algerian journalist born in Oran, Algeria, where he writes for the Quotidien d’Oran – the third largest French-Algerian newspaper. He contributes a weekly column to Le Point, and his articles appear in Liberation, Le Monde and Courrier International, and is regularly quoted around the world. A finalist for the Prix Goncourt, The Meursault Investigation won the Prix Francois Mauriac and the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie. A feature film based on the book is slated for release in 2017.
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