The Algerian journalist Kamel Daoud was named in Paris on Monday as the winner of a major world prize for French literature, for his novel “Mersault the counter-enquiry”, reports RFI.
He will collect the Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie (the Five Continents of the French-speaking World Prize) in Dakar on 28 November, during the Francophonie summit.
The Mersault of the title is the Mersault in the classic novel by Albert Camus, L’Étranger.
Daoud focuses on the brother of the “Arab”, who is killed in the Camus novel.
In Daoud’s book, the brother becomes a drunk who rants in a bar talking about his sibling and giving substance to the “Arab”, who in the Camus novel is merely a symbol with no character.
Read more of this report from RFI.