Albert Camus’s L’Étranger and “Les Muets”: Violence and Reconciliation between Arab and Pied-Noir

Contrary to the interpretations of Edward Said and other influential critics, this essay argues that Albert Camus, in his great novel L’Étranger, numerous journalistic essays over two decades, and an often overlooked short story, “Les Muets” (The Silent Men), sympathized with Arab grievances. He favored reconciliation based on equality and reciprocity between Algerian Muslims (predominantly Arabs but including a Kabylian Berber minority, whose suffering he described with great pathos) and pieds-noirs (European colonists).