The Meursault Investigation: A Novel

On the book jacket of this novel, a reviewer writes that The Meursault Investigation is "a worthy complement to its great predecessor" [Albert Camus' The Stranger]. I wouldn't go that far. Daoud's novel lacks the solid, strong existential and absurdist underpinnings of Camus's work. And, honestly, I almost gave up on the book after I'd read the first couple of chapters. Sort of gimmicky. A retelling of so many plot details from The Stranger, as well as references to so many of its characters (Salamano, Raymond, Marie, the robot lady, etc.). In addition, the post-colonial approach to decolonization, to cultural displacement and to being "unhomed" in one own country is familiar ground at this point in literature, including the "mimicry" of the subjugated individual who feels compelled to learn the language of his oppressors. I get it.What crept on me---slowly, gradually---was the subtle evolution of the novel's narrator Harun. Progressively, as this short novel unfolds, Harun starts sounding more and more like Camus' Meursault in his assaults on government officials, the judicial system, human hypocrisy, futility of effort, the stupidity of love, the absence of God, and how all religions falsify the weight of the world. And, like Meursault, I think that Harun steps into his true existential self only in the final pages of the novel. In a way---and this is why I ultimately came to appreciate the novel--- this is not the story of The Stranger from an Arab point of view--this is the more universal story of the absurd existence of all humankind, from Algeria to France to every corner of this weird and incomprehensible planet where we are all strangers to one another, and to ourselves. Where we are persecuted for not belonging to the group, for refusing to belong. And how clever Daoud sometimes is in this novel, like when he substitutes the Magistrate waving a crucifix in Merusault's face with the officer in the Army of National Liberation (waving the little Algerian flag in Harun's face and asking "Do you know what this is?"). An excellent transition that speaks volumes about authority, power and societal norms.And Harun hates Fridays (as Meursault hated Sundays) because of his aversion to Islamic rituals? Ouch!Intentionally or unintentionally, the murdered Musa in Daoud's novel becomes just as lost in the shuffle as the nameless Arab in The Stranger, as Daoud's investigation into the meaning of life broadens its scope. Also, what seems most interesting is Harun's relationship with his mother---so crippling and debilitating.I did not like Daoud's lengthy, verbatim borrowing of the text of the Stranger towards the end. It didn't quite work for me. I don't think that was necessary or effective. Still, the novel overall is well worth reading---much better also if you have already read The Stranger.

Have any friends who like to dress up for Halloween? I only ask because the award-winning THE MEURSAULT INVESTIGATION (TMI) reminds me of two popular Halloween costumes: the Elvis impersonator and the creepy clown.Here, I observe that TMI is not unlike an accomplished Elvis impersonator, who performs, with great style, in tribute to a cultural icon. At the same time, I say that TMI is not unlike a creepy clown, who inverts a familiar circus icon, transforming what is usually sweetly amusing into a something that is darkly annoying.Anyway, the idea here is that whatever outfit your friend chooses—tributary or transgressive—you will, on Halloween night, recognize that the person in the costume is your buddy. And as the evening advances and you get that sugar high, the effect of his costume will diminish. Elvis… clown… it ultimately doesn’t matter because it’s still good old Fred in lame imitation. No matter how great the costume, Fred can’t transcend what he is.I mention this because in TMI, Kamel Daoud can’t escape Camus and his masterpiece THE STRANGER. Not that Daoud wants to, mind you. But no matter what Daoud writes, whether tribute or inversion, the reader can’t escape that thought that… oh, yeah, Camus did this in THE STRANGER. And here, Daoud offers another variation and here’s another variation and yet another… Sheesh… let it rest Kamel.Initially, this reader found this derivative approach relatively interesting, since it is the reimagining of a great book. But, for this reader, this approach eventually became tiresome, with THE STRANGER always looming in the narrative. Yes, in TMI Daoud tells the story of Harun, the brother of the Arab killed on the beach by Meursault. But his novel is totally dependent on THE STRANGER and never breaks free. It’s good only in relation to Camus.For some reason, I am reminded of Melania plagiarizing Michelle.Regardless, this novel has its merits. Here, it gets a little complicated. But in TMI, Meursault has written a novel, THE OTHER, which is clearly Daoud referencing THE STRANGER. And here’s what Harun has to say about the writer of that imagined book. “For a brief while, I knew your hero’s genius: the ability to tear open the common, everyday language and emerge on the other side, where a more devastating language is waiting to narrate the world in another way… I think that’s the grand style, when all is said and done: to speak with the austere precision…”It took me two weeks to get through this short book. Meh!

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?

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.

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!