The Arab

“A story in which the distinction between perpetrator, victim, convicted person and acquitted person is paper-thin.” -Esha Guy Hadjadj (De Groene Amsterdammer)

In Albert Camus' “L'Étranger”, a man named Meursault awaits his execution. He has been sentenced to death for the murder of a man whose name he does not know. But who was this “Arab”? In 2013, Algerian writer Kamel Daoud provided an answer in the form of the book “Meursault, contre-enquête”, in which he reopens the case and looks at it from a different perspective. With THE ARAB (2026), Malek Bensmail brings this postcolonial answer to life and focuses on Algeria itself, the “land of a million martyrs”. The now elderly brother of the hitherto ignored “Arab” tells his story and, with it, the story of Algeria.