Algerian author and journalist Kamel Daoud will be in conversation with Professor Catriona Seth, discussing his novel “Meursault, contre-enquête”, winner of the Goncourt Prize for First Novel in 2015.

Daoud conceived his debut novel, The Meursault Investigation, as a fictional “counterinvestigation” or retelling of Albert Camus’s L’Étranger.

Narrated by the imagined brother of the nameless “Arab” senselessly murdered by the detached and dispassionate Meursault, Daoud’s novel presents a dual portrait of the human condition as envisioned by Camus and re-envisioned by Daoud.

In addition to the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman, the work also received the Prix François Mauriac and the Prix des Cinq Continents for Francophone writing.

However, offended by the narrator’s vehement rebuke of religion in the book, Islamists denounced the work as blasphemy, and demanded retribution.

In 2014 a fatwa was issued by a radical Salafist imam in Algeria who deemed Daoud an “enemy” of Islam.

At Maison Française d'Oxford, 2-10 Norham Road, OX2 6SE on October 22, 5pm-7.30pm. Free but limited spaces due to Covid restrictions.