(Paris) the stranger by Albert Camus has become a classic for its refined character, and its manga adaptation published on Wednesday underlines it again.
The comic strip is the work of a young Japanese author, born in 1989, Ryota Kurumado, who is quite a fan of the writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature to have already adapted another of his novels, Plague (four volumes in Japanese, 2020-2021, and in French, 2021-2022).
the stranger appears in a single volume of 300 pages, first in French, published by Michel Lafon.
Recounting the murder committed, just after the death of his mother, by Meursault, a dull-looking young Algiers office worker, the novel is constrained by the narration of this stingy protagonist, who smooths over everything that happens to him.
It is this nihilism that some critics criticize the novel when it was published in May 1942. Camus wrote it in the atmosphere, which he finds sinister, of the Paris of the “phony war”, between March and May 1940 .
Big plans
In the even less gratifying editorial and intellectual landscape of the Occupation, the book will be successful with intellectuals who will count after the war: Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot, Roland Barthes.
The manga is different, accumulating close-ups on the faces, and restoring the violence of the homicide.
These Japanese versions of Plague And the stranger went under the magnifying glass of rights holders attentive to the legacy of the French writer, who died in 1960 at the age of 46. In this case his daughter Catherine Camus, assisted by her granddaughter Élisabeth Maisondieu-Camus.
“We received extracts from the drawing of Plague. And we liked it a lot: we found the trait extraordinary, and the adaptations very coherent, ”says the latter.
“It’s quite difficult to adapt Camus into manga, to draw philosophical novels. What the manga has brought are very expressive faces, to show all the states Meursault went through, and the fact of desacralizing the masterpiece, to stop on certain scenes, to add rhythm ”, adds editor Elsa Lafon.
In addition to Gallimard, the house that publishes the work of the philosopher and writer, the Camus have been working with Editions Michel Lafon since a biographical album from 2009, Albert Camus, solitary and supportive.
Permanent bestseller
the stranger, with its less than 200 pages in paperback (Folio editions), is a permanent bestseller. For example, it is the sixth best-selling book in France between 2005 and 2020, with nearly 120,000 copies per year.
The novel had already been adapted into a comic strip by Jacques Ferrandez, at Gallimard BD, in settings very faithfully restored by an author specializing in Algeria. While those of Ryota Kurumado, to whom the shores of the Mediterranean are not familiar, are simplified to the extreme.
That a Japanese person took over this French classic shows that “we don’t have to do much for the work to live: Camus lives by himself all over the world”, explains his granddaughter.
“We are more and more in demand. Bringing it to life consists of examining the possibility of adaptations: this manga, but I’m also thinking of plays, audiovisual works… We try to be open, leaving their voice to other authors, “explains -She.
Illustration with the mangaka: it does not begin with the famous “Today, mom is dead”, but with a scene from the trial, followed by a flashback.
A serial adaptation of Plague is being filmed, for broadcast on France 2 in 2024.
In bookstores, the last works that remain to be published by Camus will be correspondence. The one with actress Maria Casarès, in 2017, was a huge success.