The Meursault Investigation

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 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.