ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 begins with an investigation into Camus’s sensibility, instilled through his experience of poverty and relationship to his mother. His response to Algerians’ armed insurgency brought his sensibility into sharp relief. Under the subheadings, I investigate the failure of language as the manifestation of the absurd and as the site of Camus’s ethical formation. I develop the two – both language’s failure and the absurd as the site of Camus’s ethical formation – through a comparative analysis of Camus’s 1942 novel L’Étranger and Kamel Daoud’s 2014 novel Meursault, contre-enquête, written in direct response to the former. The comparison additionally allows me to reflect on Camus’s relationship to his homeland of Algeria and to today’s Algerians.
