The Meursault Investigation
Ratings5
Average rating3.8
This response to Camus's The Stranger is at once a love story and a political manifesto about post-colonial Algeria, Islam, and the irrelevance of Arab lives. He was the brother of "the Arab" killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Camus's classic novel. Seventy years after that event, Harun, who has lived since childhood in the shadow of his sibling's memory, refuses to let him remain anonymous: he gives his brother a story and a name--Musa--and describes the events that led to Musa's casual murder on a dazzlingly sunny beach. Harun is an old man tormented by frustration. In a bar in Oran, night after night, he ruminates on his solitude, on his anger with men desperate for a god, and on his disarray when faced with a country that has so disappointed him. A stranger among his own people, he wants to be granted, finally, the right to die.
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This short novel is a beautifully written, dreamlike monologue, a rant by the purported brother of the “Arab” killed by Meursault in Camus's novel L'étranger. Daoud imagines the latter as a nonfiction account written by Meursault himself, who subsequently has become acclaimed for his writing and philosophy, while the Algerians of the tale sink further into degradation and anonymity following a violent war of independence. The “Investigation” author questions nearly everything about the famous book, asserting that nearly all the details are wrong even as he seems to channel Meursault-like qualities, almost in a state of possession. It's a strange, idiosyncratic narrative that left me as bemused as the narrator's bar acquaintance must have been. What really happened under the sun? What is life, what is fiction? Can we ever know?
Solid 3 “it was good” stars. I thought it was well-written and showed the “other” side of The Stranger well, but it didn't resonate with me like I hoped it would.
Boken som du bør lese når du har lest «Den fremmede» av Albert Camus. Dette er fortellingen til broren av araberen som Camus' hovedperson drepte på stranden i Alger. New York Times kaller den en oppfølger, ikke en alternativ historie, og tanken slår meg: Hvis alle som bøker fra kolonitiden skrevet av vestlige forfattete fikk en motsvarende bok skrevet av den koloniserte: Hva slags verdensbildet hadde vi da fått?
Velskrevet, håpløst og ærlig, en fabelaktig liten diamant.
