ARCHIVES 2015 / Meursaults

When Meursault, the hero of Albert Camus's The Stranger, published in 1942, commits a crime on a sunny beach in Algeria, it is an anonymous Arab he kills—his name will not be uttered even once. Using this meaningful and suffocating anonymity as his starting point, Kamel Daoud built, in 2013, The Meursault Investigation, a novel which gives this anonymous Algerian an identity, a face, and a personality, as well as a place in the history of his country. Through the story of Haroun therefore appears Moussa, this brother who disappeared one summer afternoon, and left behind the weight of his absence, a pain that never disappeared, and an ever-present anger. Philippe Berling has chosen to make us hear this monologue by an old man who cannot let go of his memories and throws them at the audience as if to free himself of them. While his mother, a surviving shadow who can't but sing her rage and misfortune, watches on, Haroun speaks of his years of mourning and of the history of Algeria, intimately intertwined with his personal drama. The cost of independence, the disillusionment that followed, the tragedy of civil war and terrorism... Everything that makes up a life stolen and broken, between reality and fantasy, sarcasm and biting humour.

After graduating from the INSAS in Brussels, Philippe Berling founded the company Théâtre Obligatoire, began his career as a director, and continued to learn from many theatre and opera directors: André Engel, Jean-Pierre Vincent, Alain Françon, Bruno Bayen. From 1990 to 1994, he worked with Jean-Marie Villégier at the Théâtre national de Strasbourg, where he was director of programming. In 1995, he was appointed director of the Théâtre du Peuple de Bussang, before continuing his work as a director as a partner with several theatres (Belfort, Coulommiers, Auxerre, Noisy-le-Grand...). In 2010, he was appointed co-director of the Théâtre Liberté de Toulon along with Charles Berling, his brother. Philippe Berling has directed almost fifty plays, all evidence of his curiosity for classic and modern dramatic (Heinrich von Kleist, Henrik Ibsen, Georges Feydeau, Eduardo De Filippo, Serge Valletti...) and non-dramatic literature (Fernando Pessoa, Jean-Henri Fabre).

Former editor-in-chief of the Quotidien d'Oran, Kamel Daoud is today one of Algeria's most famous columnist with “Raïna Raïkoum” (“My opinion, your opinion”), an op.-ed. he writes almost daily in French, a language he learnt on his own during the Arabisation of Algerian schools in the 1970s. The author of a collection of short stories, Le Minotaure 504 (2008), he published his first novel in Algeria in 2013: Meursault, contre-enquête (The Meursault Investigation). Already translated into twenty-two languages, this book was awarded the Prix François Mauriac and the Prix des 5 continents de la francophonie. Certain Muslim authorities in Algeria have been campaigning for The Meursault Investigation to be banned, a religious reaction to Kamel Daoud's engagement in favour of secularism in Algeria.