In the novel The Meursault Investigation (Meursault, contre-enquête), the Algerian author and journalist Kamel Daoud takes on the task of giving Albert Camus’s famous story of a murder in The Stranger a different perspective. While the victim remains an unnamed Arab in Camus’s work, Daoud names the victim Moussa and lets his brother, Haroun, recount his sorrow, loneliness, and rage. The novel has been described as a postcolonial response to Albert Camus’s inability to see the victims of colonialism as individuals, a recurring trait in Western reporting and literature about the “global south.”
The mixture of postcolonial critique, existential philosophy, and reflections on identity and cultural memory reappears in Daoud’s latest novel The Scar, which was awarded the Prix Goncourt.
Our festival’s artistic director, Kholod Saghir, will converse with Daoud.
Date och time: Wednesday March 18, 18.15–19.00
Place: Uppsala City Library, Free Admission!
Language: French with interpretation into Swedish