Meursault Biruddho Sakhyo by Kamel Daoud

Winner of the prestigious Romain Rolland Book Prize 2022, ‘Meursault Biruddho Sakhyo’ is a superlative translation work by Trinanjan Chakraborty of the acclaimed novel ‘Meursault?Contre Enquete’ by Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud. He was the brother of “the Arab” killed by the infamous Meursault, the antihero of Albert Camus’s classic novel ‘The Stranger’. 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. In a bar in Oran, night after night, he ruminates on his solitude, on his broken heart, 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. ‘The Stranger’ is of course central to Daoud’s story, in which he both endorses and criticizes one of the most famous novels in the world. A worthy complement to its great predecessor, this book is not only a profound meditation on Arab identity and the disastrous effects of colonialism in Algeria, but also a stunning work of literature in its own right, told in a unique and affecting voice.