Kamel Daoud

Set in the post-modern land of deconstructive textuality, a confessed liar, Harun, affirms his affinity by blood to “the Arab”, the unnamed other in Camus’ famous novel, L’Étranger, the one whom Camus’ narrator, Meursault, murders in cold (or hot) blood on that sandy beach in Algiers one afternoon. Harun names the unnamed victim to be none other than Musa, his brother. Now, fifty years later, in a wine-soaked, maundering rant, Harun wants to share his story. His chosen show more interlocutor is an unnamed academic, a researcher exploring the broader aspects of Camus’ existentialist novel. Harun describes his mother’s investigation into the death of her son, the empty grave, her abandonment of Algiers with her younger son, and the years of lassitude followed by one decisive act in the middle of night on the 5th of July, 1962.

Daoud’s novel is brilliantly set in the shadow of Camus’ novel but equally in the shadow of Algeria itself and its blood-soaked transition from French rule to, most recently, a quasi-religious state. Daoud’s narrator is ambivalent in the extreme but for this one certainty — that he is the brother of the slain unnamed Arab of Camus’ novel. It is a claim both definitive and absurd, as befits an inheritor of Camus’ mantel. Daoud plays with the possibilities, including numerous allusions to Defoe’s savage, himself re-imagined by Michel Tournier in his famous novel Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique. Indeed, there are levels of play at work here that only an adept may be able to discern. That, of course, makes Daoud’s novel fascinating but also challenging; neither an easy read nor an entirely satisfying one. Nevertheless, for the sheer audacity of it I could hardly do less than at least gently recommend it. show less

Zabor is something of an outcast in his Algerian village, a drop-out from the madrassa and cast out from the family home as a small child by his father the wealthy butcher Hadj Brahim, but he is tolerated and secretly appreciated for his useful — whilst probably dangerous and heretical — gift of saving his neighbours’ lives by writing about them. In French.

But then he is called in by his estranged half-brothers to try to save Hadj Brahim’s life…

This is a complicated and show more multi-layered book about the power of language and literacy, with Zabor casting himself variously as David the psalmist, Isaac (son of a sheep-slaughterer…), Oedipus, Sheherazade, Robinson Crusoe, Ishmael (both biblical and Melville), and a host of other literary and religious figures. We are made to think about the power of written and spoken words, about the way we can travel in our imagination, about reading as a form of masturbation, and much else. A big theme is ’French versus Arabic’: Zabor loves the power and grace of Arabic, but is frustrated by the way, as far as the village is concerned, it has only one book, a book he has fallen out of love with; French is alien to him, and he has largely taught himself to read it, but gives him access to an apparently unlimited — if haphazard — range of books that happen to wash up in the village.

A powerful and fascinating book, but it’s also very claustrophobic sometimes, and Zabor’s a frustrating narrator who feeds us information in fragmented patterns. At first it is difficult to see where he is taking us. It took me quite a long time to get properly into it, but it was worth persisting: about halfway through, everything seems to fall together and from then on I didn’t want to put it down. show less

The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud is an Algerian answer to Albert Camus’ story The Stranger in which a Frenchman, Meursault, casually murders an Arab on the beach at Algiers. This short novel is supposedly narrated by the brother of the murdered Arab and is told some 70 years after the event.

In The Stranger much is written about Meursault, his feelings, his reactions, his story and yet the victim of the crime remains a nameless Arab. In this account we are given his name, Musa, show more and although he is unable to speak for himself, his brother, Harun, tells of his family and home. One of the tragedies of this story is the fact that Harun and his mother were unable to claim the body, as his name is never entered into any of the official records. The mother, tremendously grief-stricken becomes obsessed with seeking retribution. In an effort to appease his Mother, Harun kills a French settler, but instead of calling attention by committing a revenge murder, his action is considered a badly-timed killing as it occured shortly after the cease-fire that signalled the end of the war for independence.

The Meursault Investigation is a literary re-telling but in this version it is more than a simple counterpoint to the original. The country of Algeria becomes more than just the setting as the author meditates on the post-colonial failures of his country and doesn’t particularly sing out praises for how it is now being run. The author has received mixed reactions to this book, some shower him with literary acclaim, while many right-wing Muslims feel he should be on trial for blasphemy. show less

This novel is a response to [author:Albert Camus|957894]'s [book:The Stranger|49552]. While The Stranger is all about the pied-noir (French colonizer; born in Algeria) Meursault and his crime of murdering "the Arab", Daoud has written this book to give that Arab a name and family. The book is narrated by Musa's brother, who was just 7 when he was murdered, and Harun's entire life has been dictated by his brother's murder, his mother's grief, his own confusion.

I was expecting something very show more different from what I got. While Harun names his brother Musa, we don't learn much more about him. Instead Harun rants--about the police who never found/lost his brother's body, the French, the readers of The Stranger, Algerians who expected him to fight for independence, religion in general, his own crime, the difficulty his mother had raising him alone. Really he shows (and admits) ho disturbingly similar he and Meursault are, right down to not knowing how old their mothers are (which, among other details irrelevant to his crime, got Meursault executed). So the colonizer was executed for his lack of social graces while his victim was ignored and unnamed, while Harun is let go and his French victim is named--there is a lot here to unpack between the results of their crimes, the similarities between the mothers and the sons and their relationships, their inabilities to fit in "properly". Despite all this, the book was still quite dull to read. show less