In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months that overlap by one month, it is time to announce the April–May 2020 topic challenge.
Based on the number of votes, the third topic challenge of the year 2020 will be
The Stranger / Meursault
What's a topic challenge?
See the meta posts linked above, and also this main meta post. In short, during April–May 2020 we should all try to read Albert Camus' novel L'Étranger / The Stranger and/or other works of literature that were inspired by it.
Participation is not obligatory in any sense, but those who participate will be forever remembered in the annals of our history. And of course it goes without saying that questions on other works are more than welcome during April and May too; they just won't count as part of this topic challenge.
How can I take part?
By getting hold of Camus's novel The Stranger or another work inspired by it and asking good questions about these works. Questions about The Stranger should be tagged with the-stranger, albert-camus and french-literature. Questions about other works will require other tags. We'll keep a list of all such questions in an answer to this meta post.
Below is the original presentation of this topic challenge:
Albert Camus' novel L'Étranger / The Stranger has inspired other artists. The topic challenge would consist in posting and answering questions about such works. The English Wikipedia article mentions a few songs that are relevant; the French Wikipedia article mentions a few other ones.
The most interesting work inspired by L'Étranger may be Kamel Daoud's novel Meursault, contre-enquête / The Meursault Investigation (2013); its story is told from the point of view of Harun, the brother of the Arab killed by Meursault.
Questions about Camus's novel L'Étranger would also count for this challenge. (The French version of L'Étranger is available online.)
Another novel inspired by The Stranger is Salim Bachi's Le Dernier Été d’un jeune homme (Flammarion, 2013).
What's next?
- Vote here for the next topic challenge (May–June), or propose your own!
Update: An excerpt of the English translation of Daoud's novel was published in The New Yorker in March 2015.
