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Where All the Reasons To Kill Are Absurd

JL;DR SUMMARY In "The Meursault Investigation," Kamel Daoud offers a profound reimagining of Albert Camus' "The Stranger" by giving a voice to the voiceless—the anonymous Arab victim murdered in Camus' novel. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

IdentityColonialismPostcolonialismNarrativeAlgeriaThe StrangerErasureAbsurdismCamusKamel Daoud

Places mentioned

Algiers, Oran, Algeria
"He undertakes a counter-investigation into one of the most famous crimes of the 20th century: an Arabs murder on a beach in Algiers by Camuss existential hero."
Oran, Algeria
"He finds him in a bar in the Algerian city of Oran a city Camus hated enough to use it as the setting for The Plague."
Houston, Texas, United States
"Robert Zaretsky is a professor of history at the University of Houston and the author, most recently, of Boswells Enlightenment."

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Cairo Item ID 80011
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-04-14 05:31:32 UTC
Curated 2026-04-14 08:31:21 UTC