Literature and Drama Editor Gemma Bini examines how Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation reclaims the voices erased in Camus’ The Stranger.
“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.” Albert Camus’ iconic opening to The Stranger still holds an indisputably important position in the literary canon. Despite its seemingly unfadable popularity, which has led scholars and critics to talk about the philosophical novella for almost 100 years, there has not been much discussion of its politics. After all, The Stranger aims to appear to its readers as a story that transcends its setting (Algiers in the 1940s) to make the point that human existence is absurd.
There is no deeper meaning that justifies our presence on Earth, nor a God that created us for a purpose. Hence, violence, love, relationships, ethics and all that human beings create become fundamentally meaningless. But what is the implication of a French person asserting this in the socio-political context of a country brutally colonised by his people?
This question is at the heart of Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation. The Algerian journalist and writer published the book in 2013 and was awarded the Prix Goncourt first novel prize in 2015. As the title suggests, the novel presents an inquiry into the murder of ‘the Arab’ committed by Camus’ main character. Daoud blends Meursault with Camus: the narrator, Harun, explains that the Frenchman wrote a novel after killing ‘the Arab’ and became famous for his talent as a writer.
Harun’s intention, however, is not to celebrate Meursault’s/Camus’ intellect. He aims to bring justice to the Frenchman’s victim, who happened to be his brother Musa. From the very first page, Harun points out what many readers of The Stranger had ignored: Meursault’s crime is not absurd, but an act of colonial violence which keeps being perpetrated by the original book as it turns Musa into a nameless and voiceless victim.
“The original guy was such a good storyteller, he managed to make people forget his crime, whereas the other one was a poor illiterate God created apparently for the sole purpose of taking a bullet and returning to dust — an anonymous person who didn’t even have the time to be given a name.”
The murder has irrevocably marked Harun's life. He becomes both a double and an ‘other’ to Meursault. He lives his life in between the feeling of absurdity and the knowledge that the violence he is experiencing is not due to an existential condition but to the racist French colonial system. His mother and him spend years and years grieving. With a gun in his hands, he finally feels like he can avenge Musa.
Unlike Camus’, Daoud’s book is deeply connected to the historical and political context of the country, spanning from before to years after the end of the war of independence. As the author responds to it, he seems to underline that The Stranger is, even if unintendedly, pushing racist and colonialist propaganda because it paints colonial violence at the hands of pied-noirs like Meursault as gratuitous and meaningless. Harun shows the readers that such an event would not have happened, had it not been for the socio-political context.
“I tell myself he must have been fed up with wandering around in circles in a country that wanted nothing to do with him, whether dead or alive. The murder he committed seems like the act of a disappointed lover unable to possess the land he loves. How he must have suffered, poor man! To be the child of a place that never gave you birth …”
Besides being an incredibly well-written novel, Daoud’s book presents important criticism of what we consider classic literature. It suggests that readers should look back at pieces they loved and try to hear the voices of the people not represented in the European canon, to notice what is left out. Daoud seems to echo the theories of Edward Said about colonial literature. Said had often criticised Camus’ work for being unconsciously colonialist and argued that readers should pay attention to the contexts books are tied to, “ no matter how aesthetic or entertaining the work”. The Meursault Investigation is a fictional transposition of Said’s enquiry that takes into account both the problematic aspects of The Stranger and its qualities.
It is, in fact, noticeable that Daoud has a passion for the original novel. There are numerous and very specific references to The Stranger. The very first words of The Meursault Investigation mirror the other book, with the narrator stating “Mama is still alive today”. The novel gradually deconstructs the original story and builds a new way to perceive it, without mocking the other author’s work. It appears as a necessary act to have the full picture of the very complex history of the setting chosen by Camus, one that takes into account the perspective of the colonised.
“The murderer got famous, and his story’s too well written for me to get any ideas about imitating him. He wrote in his own language. Therefore I’m going to do what was done in this country after Independence: I’m going to take the stones from the old houses the colonists left behind, remove them one by one, and build my own house, my own language.”
Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation is not merely a response to a classic, it’s a reclamation of narrative space. He does not deny the importance of Camus’ work, but underlines the need of a literature where the colonised speak, remember and refuse erasure. Moreover, it makes the point that no piece of literature is apolitical. Even if Camus was not an outspoken supporter of colonialism, his objectification of Algerian characters does prove that he was not immune to colonial propaganda. His silences upheld France’s colonial system. Thus, Daoud assigning a name and a story to Musa is not just a writing exercise; it is an act of literary justice.