Albert Camus of Europe and Africa

Forty years ago Conor Cruise O’Brien wrote a small but brlliantly argued critique of Camus’ work. In The Outsider, for example, amongst many things O’Brien notes is that a European in Algeria would not face the death penalty for the murder of an Arab. More fundamentally O’Brien takes issue with the allegorical value of the plague in La Peste. It is of course generally accepted that the disease is a metaphor for the Nazi occupation of France & Western Europe, however the impact of this metaphor collapses when one considers that Oran itself was occupied by the French colonialists–an irony which Camus seems blissfully unaware. In passing there is not a named Arab who is the victim of the plague. It’s as if these deaths are of little value compared to the French occupiers.