Despite being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Albert Camus (1913-1960) is one of those 20th Century writers who remains relatively unknown. He was of French descent, born to a working class family in colonial Algeria. He grew up and wrote in both Algeria and Paris, France, where he died in a motor accident in 1960, leaving inside the wreckage of the car that killed him the manuscript of a posthumously published autobiographical novel - The First Man (1994).
The Stranger, perhaps Camus’ best known work, is set around the character of Meursault - somebody should help us to pronounce the French name. As the story begins, Meursault receives news of his mother’s demise in an old people’s home outside Algiers via a typically brief telegram which merely states: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours”.
Meursault travels the 80 kilometres stretch to Marengo by bus to attend his mother’s funeral, feeling rather curiously out of place the whole time he is there in the company of the old age home’s director, caretaker and a group of old people resident in the home. At one point while he sits on the side of the casket in the little mortuary at the home, a group of old people on the opposite end, he observes that “for a second I had the ridiculous feeling that they were there to judge me”.
Soon after the burial, Meursault returns to Algiers where he immediately begins a love relationship with Marie, a former typist at his workplace. At the same time, he also gets hooked up with Raymond, a neighbour who owns an apartment next to his. As it turns out, Raymond, who had been dating a “Moorish” (read: Arab) girlfriend, gets into trouble after he beats
her up. The girl’s brother, together with a couple of other Arab friends, hound Raymond and monitor his every move.
Things come to a head when Meursault, Raymond and Masson - Raymond’s friend - are on a stroll at a local beach. They end up in a fist-fight with the Arabs. Raymond has to be stitched up after sustaining some knife wounds.
Without really intending it, Meursault finds himself quickly entangled in his friend Raymond’s problems with the Arabs. On a solitary walk at the beach one hot summer afternoon, Meursault comes face-to-face with ‘Raymond’s man’. The Arab brandishes a knife at him and Meursault returns fire using Raymond’s revolver. He fires a single shot which kills the Arab and then fires four more shots in quick succession while the Arab’s body lies motionless. This fateful incident at the beach, according to Meursault, is to turn out like he were “knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness”.
He is arrested and put in prison for a long period before the case goes to trial. In prison, Meursault experiences a great deal of loneliness and comes to realise just how life behind bars makes him yearn for ‘a woman’s body’ - yes, any woman; not necessarily Marie - cigarettes and proper sleep.
At Meursault’s trial, several people - his own personal friends as well as the bureaucrats and at least one ‘patient’ from the old people’s home - are brought in as witnesses to provide a description of the type of life he led before he killed a man.
All but very few of them report how Meursault left his mother to vegetate and die in an old people’s home; how he never showed any remorse when his mother - ‘maman’, as he calls her - died in the home; how he callously pumped up a man with four pistol bullets while he lay dead on the beach; and, on this basis, they all invariably come to the conclusion that he is indeed a ‘monster’ who deserves to be punished by death.
Meursault is accordingly sentenced to death and the story ends as he awaits and contemplates his fate; a position not too unlike “observing a stone which is coming to hit you”, ala Dambudzo Marechera. The Stranger is truly a great novel and a gripping read. At just 123 pages, it can be read at one sitting.
However, after you get to the end of Part 1, which ends when Meursault kills the Arab at the beach, you begin to get the feeling that the remaining pages tend to amount to an anti-climax of sorts.
Perhaps Camus could have told the story better by having his character Meursault in prison from the first page and relating the circumstances and details leading to his arrest retrospectively. That, however, is admittedly a rather subjective view. In its overall treatment of Arab/Western (read French) relations, however, Camus’ 1942 novel inevitably tends to remind one of the contemporary world in which the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism is pitted in a violent confrontation against Bush’s (and to a smaller extent Tony Blair’s) war on terror. You might certainly find it a worthwhile book to read for yourself.
I had Exclusive Books at Riverwalk order me a paperback version from the US - which takes about six weeks - after I could not find any Albert Camus book in any of our local bookstores.
