Classics Conversation: Albert Camus – The Stranger
In connection with the screening of François Ozon’s film The Stranger at this year’s festival, the Literature House in Trondheim invites audiences to a classics conversation about one of the most important works in French literary history: Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger (1942), on which the film is based.
When: 3. March 20:00-21:30
Where: Sellanraa
In connection with Kosmorama’s screening of François Ozon’s film The Stranger, the Literature House in Trondheim invites audiences to a classics conversation about one of the most important works in French literary history: Albert Camus’s novel The Stranger (1942), on which the film is based.
The story of The Stranger is set in French Algeria in the 1930s, where the protagonist Meursault—like Camus himself—is a pied-noir (an ethnic European born in Algeria). Through the novel, Camus explores truth and the absurd: how does one live in a world that makes no sense? Meursault refuses to adapt to society’s expectations. He observes and lets his senses guide him. He speaks little, but always honestly, even when it works against his own interests.
The novel’s central scene, in which he kills a nameless Arab, has left a lasting mark—from The Cure’s song “Killing an Arab” (1979) to Kamel Daoud’s critically acclaimed novel The Meursault Investigation (2013), which gives the nameless man an identity and offers a new perspective on The Stranger.
Camus himself was concerned with not excluding any side of the truth. Through his many publications (also as a journalist), he fought against totalitarian forces and ideologies that legitimized oppression, murder, and the death penalty.
He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, in the midst of the devastating Algerian War. Just three years later, he died in a tragic car accident at the age of 46—an abrupt and absurd end to one of the most important bodies of work of the twentieth century. What is it about Camus and his breakthrough novel that still resonates with us today?
On stage we meet the authors behind the critically acclaimed book Use and Pleasure – French Literature Through a Thousand Years (2019): Kjerstin Aukrust, Trude Kolderup, and Geir Uvsløkk. Kjerstin Aukrust will moderate the conversation.
- Geir Uvsløkk is Professor of French Literature and Area Studies at the University of Oslo.
- Trude Kolderup is Associate Professor of French Literature at the Department of Language and Literature at NTNU.
- Kjerstin Aukrust is Professor of French Literature and Area Studies at the University of Oslo.
The classics conversation is organized by the Literature House in Trondheim in collaboration with Kosmorama and Olavsfest.
Tickets for the screening of the film The Stranger will be available via ticket release on February 13.
