Tom Galbraith

Meursault Should Have Shot Kamel Daoud

Revisado: 02-21-16

Would you try another book from Kamel Daoud and John Cullen - translator and/or Fajer Al-Kaisi?

Never for Daoud, Cullen was only the translator.

Would you ever listen to anything by Kamel Daoud and John Cullen - translator again?

No

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Yes, it is slow.

What character would you cut from The Meursault Investigation?

The narrator

Any additional comments?

The book is exploitive, a dirty trick on Camus fans. Its narrator is a fictional brother of Meursalt's unnamed Native Algerian murder victim in The Stranger. He spews out a seemingly endless disorganized railing against the unfairness of it all--Camus becoming famous while denying the narrator's brother an identity by not mentioning his name, a microcosm of the whole nasty colonial experience, and the bother was a swell guy to boot, helped support the family, treated the younger brother narrator to peppermint ice cream. (I made up the ice cream, but it was something like that.) Details I do not remember because I I have tried very heard to forget everything in this book. I already knew that the French treated Algerians wretchedly. I've seen The Battle of Algiers; know that Camus was broadly criticized for his failure to condemn French actions in it. Repeated invective and expressions of self-pity however well deserved soon become tedious. They become unbearably so ten minutes into this audiobook. By a considerable margin The Meursault Investigation is the worst audiobook I've ever listened to.

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