In the French-speaking world, everyone has read l'Étranger (The Stranger) by Albert Camus. The 1942 book, which many Dutch have also read, if only because it is nice and thin for the French reading list, tells of a white French resident of Algeria, a so-called pied-noir, who is so convinced of the absurdity of life that he murders an Arab, with no real clear motive. In 2014, Kamel Daoud, an Algerian author, wrote the book Meursault, Contre-Enquête, in which he gives the nameless Arab a name and an existence, in response to the indifferent colonialism of the main character in Camus' book.
This year's Holland Festival features a performance created by Schauspielhaus Zurich and Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, which takes up the fact of the nameless Arab in Camus' work. Two actors, Moroccan-born Mounir Margoum, and the pied-noir Thierry Raynaud plays the roles of Daoud and Camus in an at times dazzling spectacle that eventually includes gunfire.
An e-mail from the publisher
I spoke to the actors afterwards. Thierry Renaud explains how they arrived at the performance: 'Director Nicolas Stehmann first wanted to make an adaptation of the book Meursault, Contre-Enquête. When you read that, you feel that it has so much to do with l'Étranger that you can no longer see them separately. It loses its flavour if you see them separately. If you know l'Étranger and you read Daoud, it's much more interesting.'
'So we wanted to work on both books, but then we got an e-mail from the publisher of Catherine Camus, Albert Camus' granddaughter, that we were not allowed to use a letter from l'Étranger if we associated it with Daoud. So we were allowed to edit l'Étranger, but without using Contre Enquête in the process. When we thought about that, we discovered that this was exactly the core of our project: how do you kill 'an Arab'?
A gift from heaven
Mounir Margoum concurs: 'It was a gift from heaven. I remember Thierry saying: now I have no legitimacy to participate in this project, as a white Frenchman. I said to him: your parents are from Algeria, you are as entitled to participate as I am, because I am not Algerian, I was born in Morocco. That's how we got talking.'
Thierry Renaud confirms how important Camus is: 'l'Étranger is a classic in France. Everyone reads it at school, it's part of your luggage. It's a point of reference.'
A French village
Margoum did not know the book: 'Almost everyone has read it, or at least heard of it. It's part of school. I am one of the few who had not read it. I started reading it when we started this project. When I finished it, I said: wow, what an incredible book. I knew it was set in Algeria, but it seemed like it was set in a small French village. All the characters are French, except 'l'Arabe', who was actually a stranger in his own country. Then I read Daoud's book, which also wondered why the Arab in l'Étranger didn't even have a name. I understood why Camus did it that way at the time. He described how someone was sentenced to death, not because he had killed a man, but because he had not cried at his mother's funeral. The Arab is not given a name. Do we live in the same country?'
An act of aggression
Thierry Renaud was particularly taken by the absurdity of the plot: 'Meurseault is the central figure of the book, while the world around him is completely abstract. There are love affairs, but they are completely conventional. I was particularly shocked by that. And now there are many French people who don't think we can comment on this book. I spoke to a friend who considered this play an aggressive act.'
Good to know
English (UK) 
Nederlands 
Français 
