The Meursault Investigation

You need nerve - le culot - even to think of taking on Camus if you are older than sixteen. Rewrite L'Etranger? From the point of view of drunk, impious Haroun, brother of the murdered Arab? Quelle audace! Also to dare to say that, being Arab and Algerian, there are things you don't like about the original - how the murdered man is always described in the third person, and how - dare we really say it - the Nobel prizewinner doesn't ever really notice Arabs. Camus wrote well about Arab poverty, to be sure, but there are no Arab characters in his books - only a walk-on part in the last, posthumous one, The First Man, and he's stuck in, one rather feels, to show that Camus wanted readers to be aware that not all Arabs endorsed the throwing of bombs in public spaces filled with white French. So why this absence? Was this because he wanted to show us how Arabs aren't seen? Or because he himself, white and Algerian, didn't see them? Read the book alongside the original. If you can, read both in French. (The translation is correct, in the French idiom - it fails to capture the music of Haroun's alcohol-fuelled laments, but Camus, too, is hard to translate.) Daoud is steeped in Camus, and one can cross reference the book, page by page The drunk monologue comes not from The Reluctant Fundamentalist, but from Camus' own novella The Fall, with its derailed cynic lawyer washed up in a Dutch bar. In the last paragraphs Daoud creates a Camus mixtape, taking over Meursault's final speech after the priest has implored him to repent, reprising it as an assault on contemporary Islamic piety. That takes brass, too - and we may recall that a cleric has imposed a fatwa on Daoud. Camus has given many generations the will to live and the inclination to describe the world as it is. Daoud writes with the same controlled anger, recklessness and disregard for nicety as Camus. So please salute Kemal Daoud! Enjoy this! And yes, as Manuel Valls the French Prime Minister remarked in a telephone call to its creator, it is a masterpiece.

A brave thing to do, to take on one of the greatest novels of the 20th century and question it, criticise it. Demand answers of it. Daoud said the idea for the novel, which he describes as a dialogue with Camus, took form more than four years ago after a French reporter came to Algeria to write about Camus’s legacy and interviewed him. This gave Daoud the brilliant idea of writing a response to Camus's text, to give the un-named Arab, shot by Camus's existential anti-hero Mersault on an Algerian beach, a name, a family and identity. The novel's real interest lies in the unsettling insights the reader gets into post-revolutionary Algeria. After all, the shooting of a French man by a Algerian Arab man- rehearses the whole colonial enterprise and the concatenation of events that inevitably damage the colonisers and those colonised. This book caused huge interest in France because Daoud is Algerian, an articulate, intelligent man and can talk about Islamic terrorism, existentialism, Camus, France and its appalling relationship with Algeria with dignity and insight. If the book isn’t as tightly wrought as it might be, there are never the less passages that are moving and powerful. Daoud suffered a Facebook fatwa as a result of the book and comments he made in the media but says he won't leave his country of birth. Ironically there are elements of the absurd about the plight of Kamel Daoud himself, an Algerian writer whose debut novel reaped glowing international reviews, literary honours and then, suddenly, demands for his public execution. He’s a writer to watch. The translation is good but reading it in French is best; it's the language of Algeria’s colonisers but the language Daoud chose in order to reach a wide audience. Perhaps he didn't expect the storm of controversy, praise and abuse he received. But the book will continue to make waves into the future, I expect.

Topic promised much but novel delivered little perhaps due to translation, who knows?

Simply brilliant, especially if you read Camus’ original the Stranger (or Outsider) right before. The genius in retelling the story and its aftermath from the perspective of the Algerian victim’s family runs right through the book. Yet it is high literature and very readable in its own right. Not preachy but highly enlightening. Perfect companion to Camus. I hope for more from this writer.

Dull. The main interest is in the interplay with the original L'Etranger, which personally I found obvious and tedious. And I may be missing something, but if the murder of the narrator's brother is just a piece of fiction, which the narrator frequently makes clear, how then are we supposed to believe in the narrator's story of family grief and revenge? The murder never happened. A logical disconnect which surely makes the whole book impossible.

Dull, dull, dull Not a patch on the original. Nothing to grab your interest, nor engage your mind. A struggle to get through !

Have only started it but excellent book, very well written and good translation. Very original idea but probably best to reread The Outsider first as there are references to it which are helpful. Recommended. There is a great deal in this fairly short book.

Bought this along with Camu's' 'The Outsider' as I'd heard great things about this new take on the Camus classic, written from the perspective of the dead Arab's brother. I read 'The Outsider' again in one sitting to remind myself of the key themes and picking up 'The Mersault Investigation' feels like a seamless extension. 30 pages in but it's a compelling read that deals with the wider issues around identity, individual and political, as well as addressing the complexity of French colonial rule in Algiers and the fight for independence. A powerful polemic.

Clever premis but did drone on

Beautiful

THE MERSAULT INVESTIGATION (no francês original, “Mersault, contre-enquête”), do jornalista argelino Kamel Daoud, é, geralmente, chamado de uma releitura de O ESTRANGEIRO, de Albert Camus, mas eu acho que a palavra ‘resposta’ é mais honesta. Publicado na França em 2013, o romance dialoga com a obra original ao contar uma história a partir do ponto de vista daqueles que lá são silenciados. Aqui, o narrador/protagonista/foco narrativo é o irmão do personagem chamado apenas de O Árabe no livro original, que irá contar a história de vida de seu irmão e o que aconteceu com sua família depois do assassinato. A estrutura estabelece um diálogo do narrador com o leitor – que se materializa na figura de um estudante com quem ele conversa num bar (algo parecido com o que Moshin Hamid fez em THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST). Num fluxo que combina diversos momentos do passado dele e sua família, ele vai e volta no tempo, e resgata numa intertextualidade discreta a narrativa do Estrangeiro. Daoud não faz de seu romance um espelho do de Camus, não, ele cria uma trama própria, mas que, a partir de agora, deve ser impossível reler o original sem ler este. Escrevendo em francês, Daoud toma a língua do colonizador para si, e faz dela o seu instrumento, esmiuçando um passado colonial, e um futuro e um presente de incertezas. No momento em que vivemos – especialmente com a xenofobia crescente – a voz do autor surge com força, levantando questionamentos e clamando uma revisão histórica. Creio que muita atenção se deu ao livro de Houellebecq, SUBMISSÃO, mas acho que esse, sim, é o livro importante, que merece ser lido e entrar para a posteridade. Está previsto para ser lançado no Brasil ainda esse ano.

The translator John Cullen may indeed have been a foremost translator, but his English grammar is irritatingly awful. Most odd!

Simultaneously demanding and captivating in all the best ways of literature.