‘The Meursault Investigation’ by Kamel Daoud

‘The Meursault Investigation’ by Kamel Daoud (Other Press, 143 pages, $14.95)

Kamel Daoud’s blistering “The Meursault Investigation” is based on an ingenious conceit: Its narrator, Harun, says he is the brother of the Arab shot dead at the beginning of Albert Camus’ classic 1942 novel “The Stranger.” Drinking with his unnamed interlocutor in a bar in the Algerian coastal town of Oran, Harun describes events leading to the death of his brother (given the name “Musa”) and his life after Musa’s death. The killer Meursault became a hero of mid-20th century existentialist literature, never tried for the murder but condemned after failing to cry at his mother’s funeral. The Arab he killed remained unnamed and forgotten, while Algeria was merely a convenient backdrop for an absurdist drama.