Law & Literature: Re-opening the Case of L'Etranger.

• Author: Normey, Rob
• Position: Columns

Albert Camus' early masterpiece The Stranger, published in 1942, is an enigmatic fable that has entranced generations of readers. One such reader, the Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud, has expressed his admiration for Camus' writings. Despite his appreciation, he also poses serious questions about a glaring omission in The Stranger.

The central act in the novel is the shooting of a man on a beach outside the city of Oran. The protagonist and narrator, Meursault, describes his rather confusing and hard-to fathom actions leading to the firing of five shots in the middle of the afternoon. These shots kill a man. But almost all we learn about the victim springs from the clipped confession of Meursault: "I killed an Arab." Throughout the novel, the victim remains nameless. Instead, the focus is on Meursault, including his having earlier reacted with seeming indifference to news of his mother's recent death.

... Daoud reveals the ways in which Camus' work can be woven into a depiction of today's Algeria

The famous trial imagined by Camus is a striking example of the absurdity inherent in the society of his time--French Algerian society twenty years or so before its demise through a revolutionary insurrection by the indigenous Algerian population. Symbolic of the hypocrisy of the legal system is the manner in which the trial unfolds. Meursault is found to be guilty far more on the basis of his lack of proper manners and his unwillingness to cry at his mother's recent funeral.

In his first (and beautifully written) novel, The Meursault Investigation, Daoud gives us another take entirely on the trial. The nameless narrator of the novel offers up a detailed depiction of the victim's life and restores his dignity by giving him a proper identity. Indeed, we might speak of the novel as a remarkable victim impact statement.

The first part of The Meursault Investigation irrefutably challenges the notion that Meursault provided a thorough and definitive version of the key events. The very fact that Meursault has so little to say about the man who has been shot--and appears to lack much in the way of curiosity or concern--means that he did not provide a fair and balanced account of the crime. The man with the capital "A" for Arab was shot presumably after he menaced a visiting French shipping clerk. In Camus' novel, he remains a type--with a murky and unknowable life that leaves him deprived of the qualities that would render him a proper citizen and fully...