Columnist polemicist at Quotidien d'Oran, Kamel Daoud, wrote a fascinating novel in the first game of mirrors that tends to Foreign Camus. In his book, it uses 25 times the word "Arab" but never mention the name or surname of the slain boy. And if the murderer is condemned not he is to have shown little emotion at the death of his mother more than his crime? Daoud, while respecting the spirit of Camus stirs his answer in Meursault, against survey, with insolence and a formidable talent. The novel is the monologue in a cafe of Oran, an old man claiming to be the brother of the anonymous Arab killed under the hot sun. And telling his long life so disturbing counterpoint to that of Meursault, even murder, as absurd as that of his "double" the freeing of a heavy burden, so its existence under the weight of a oppressive mother, had become a living hell since the death of this brother, whose very body was never found. Beyond the stylistic exercise, brillantissime, and the tribute to the French language and its writers, Daoud revisits the history of Algeria, the colonial times to the present, through the Independence. Ironic, incisive, the writer also attacked religion in a mixture of humor and anger. This powerful and caustic book is outstanding on all levels and a staggering density despite its relative brevity.
