The Meursault Investigation. By Kamel Daoud. Translated by John Cullen. Other Press. 143 pages; $14.95. To be published in Britain by Oneworld in July.
WHEN Albert Camus first published his best known work, “L’Étranger” in 1942, Algeria was still a colony of France, and “the Arab” killed by the book’s anti-hero, Meursault, had no name. Seventy years on, that omission is rectified in a scorching debut novel that is sure to become an essential companion to Camus’s masterpiece. He was called Musa.
“The Meursault Investigation” by Kamel Daoud, an Algerian journalist, is a biting, profound response to French colonialism. It is also a lamentation for a modern Algeria gripped by pious fundamentalism. And it has earned the author both the 2015 Prix Goncourt for best first novel and a Facebook fatwa from a minor Muslim cleric calling for his death.
The book starts as a caustic, rambling monologue told by an old man in a bar to an appropriately nameless French expat. The narrator is Musa’s younger brother, Harun; he says he and his mother are “the only genuine heroes of that famous...
from The Economist: Books and arts http://ift.tt/1FiIoBB
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