Kamel Daoud's 'The Meursault Investigation' earned him a fatwa

A 2015 Algerian novel reconsiders Camus' 'The Stranger'

Kamel Daoud's "The Meursault Investigation" exists in the same universe as Camus' famous novel, but it expands the world to imagine the story from the Arab Algerian perspective, showing the impact its main character's actions had on real people. Rather than focusing on the existential awakening of one man, it considers the longtail impact of colonialism in Algeria.

Camus' books are largely ignored in Algerian schools

The writer was born in Algiers, wrote fondly of his home, and is perhaps the most well-known Algerian-born writer of all time, but his works are no longer taught. In 2010, a series of events to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death was not permitted by the authorities. Scholars say that's because Camus believed the North African country should remain a French colony; after it gained independence in 1962, Camus' work fell out of fashion.

A Camus scholar believes 'The Stranger' is often misread as a role model

The writer and philosopher Jonathan Rée notes that part of the reason why the book was so popular was that it was an easy pick for students learning French to translate. What's often lost in translation, though, is that the book's narrator, Meursault, who murders a man, is not intended to be a role model.

Salman Rushdie's 1988 satire led to a government-sponsored death threat

Rushdie's novel "The Satanic Verses" mocked religious dogma, including an extended sequence about the Prophet Muhammad. The book was accused of blasphemy and was banned in Pakistan and India. In 1989, Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of Rushdie and his publisher.

Camus was once a communist, but eventually disavowed the ideology

The writer belonged to the French Communist Party and the Algerian Communist Party in the mid-1930s, but he was eventually expelled for refusing to downplay objections to French colonialism. By the time he published "The Rebel," he was vocally anti-communist, believing it was a utopian ideology that often relied on violence.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, readers returned to Camus' 'The Plague'

The 1947 novel, about a city in Algeria that enacts a city-wide quarantine to battle a deadly outbreak, captured readers' attention in the early months of 2020. In the UK, over 2,000 copies of the book were sold in March of that year, over six times what it had sold the month before.

Albert Camus' 'The Fall' encourages readers to live without illusions

The writer's final complete novel is a series of dramatic monologues from Jean-Baptiste Clamence, who tries to explain to a stranger the sound of laughter that began following him. As the "Philosophize This!" podcast argues, the book is Camus' attempt at wrestling with some of the thornier aspects of existentialism in a form that's more digestible than a dense philosophical tome.

Camus died in a car crash, which some believe was orchestrated by the KGB

Albert Camus died in 1960, at the age of 46, after his publisher's car crashed into a tree. Italian author Giovanni Catelli, however, alleges that what appeared to be an accident was actually an assassination by the Soviet spy agency as a way to silence the French writer's anti-Soviet beliefs.

The man behind the dark novel abandoned on the floor of the Bastille

As tensions rose in the days before the French Revolution of 1789, Donatien Alphonse François attempted to fan the flames by shouting at passersby about false horrors happening inside the Bastille where he was imprisoned. This 39-minute podcast...

The FBI kept tabs on Camus and Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre worked as an American correspondent for Combat, the newspaper edited by Albert Camus. While he was in the States, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI kept tabs on him, concerned that Combat was publishing unfavorable portrayals of the US.

The Vatican included 'The Second Sex' on its list of forbidden books

In 1956, the Vatican added Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" and her novel "The Mandarins" to its Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which already included every book by her partner Jean-Paul Sartre. The Vatican newspaper explained that de Beauvoir's books, which advocated for birth control and criticized marriage, included "the harmful atmosphere of a certain existentialist philosophy" that contained a "hidden poison." (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

'Fahrenheit 451' is a perennially banned dystopian story

This late-in-life interview with Ray Bradbury, author of “Fahrenheit 451,” details the book’s origins, providing background for one of the most popular titles in dystopian literature. As a book lover, Bradbury was horrified by the book burnings of Nazi Germany and imagined a version of the United States where firemen were censors, protecting their fellow citizens from literature’s harmful ideas. “We are a democracy of readers,” Bradbury explains. “And we should keep it that way.”

Inside 'Blood Meridian' author Cormac McCarthy's library of 20,000 books

The reclusive writer published 12 novels and taught himself stonemasonry and quantum physics, among myriad other skills and subjects. Since he died in 2023, scholars have been mining his personal library for lessons on his influences, interests, and more.

Twain ruthlessly criticized other writers

The writer was known for lambasting popular writers of his time, including Jane Austen and Robert Louis Stevenson. One of his most famous takedowns is “Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences,” an essay that simultaneously mocks Cooper’s popular adventure tales and satirizes the pretentiousness of literary criticism. Remarking on Cooper’s novel “The Deerslayer,” Twain wrote, “its conversations are—oh! Indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language.”

A lost Jack Kerouac story was discovered in the belongings of a gunned-down mob boss

The unpublished "The Holy, Beat, and Crazy Next Thing" was found in the belongings of Paul Castellano, who was murdered in 1985. It's unclear why Castellano had it, though an heir says it was originally in the collection of a "noted San Francisco-based poet...who received it directly from the author."

A dissenting take on the Lamar's Pulitzer win

Not everyone thought that Kendrick Lamar’s historic Pulitzer win was a good thing—even his own fans. Writer and hip-hop aficionado Ismail Muhammad lays out the case for why "DAMN" deserved the award, but the Pulitzers don’t deserve praise for giving it. Was the decision more about the organization’s image than the work itself? See if Muhammad’s argument convinces you.

An obituary of Salvador Dalí that captures his complicated reputation

Dalí left a complicated legacy, including controversies around his reported sympathy for fascists, abuse, and even necrophilia. Further, Dalí lost respect from people within the art world for being a sellout. His 1989 obituary captures the public ambivalence felt toward the surrealist superstar.

The story of Hypatia, a leading Roman scholar murdered by monks

Hypatia of Alexandria was a secular philosopher in Egypt who headed a university, improved scientific instruments, penned textbooks, and advised the city's leaders. As a Neoplatonist, she approached numbers as a sacred language. Religious fervor and her visible advisory role led to her brutal dismemberment by rogue monks.

Some Harlem Renaissance figures criticized Zora Neale Hurston's most famous novel when it was released

Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God" is now considered one of the masterpieces of the Harlem Renaissance, though some in the movement criticized it when it was released in 1937. Both Alain Locke and the writer Richard Wright felt that Hurston's novel lacked depth. Wright was particularly harsh, writing that "her novel carries no theme, no message, no thought. In the main, her novel is not addressed to the Negro, but to a white audience whose chauvinistic tastes she knows how to satisfy."

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Mozart's 'The Marriage of Figaro' satirizes aristocratic privilege

“The Marriage of Figaro” tells a tale about young lovers, deception, and dynamics between the aristocracy and their servants. Critiquing French society just years before the French Revolution began, this rebellious work of art experienced wild success while also being the subject of censorship and bans in the late 1700s.

The tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning image 'The Vulture and the Little Girl' (1993) generated controversy, raised concerns about ethics in photography, and eventually led to the photographer's death.

A diary of fasting through all 30 days of Ramadan

Aramco World's first-person account follows one Muslim through a full month of fasting—the pre-dawn suhoor meal, the hunger wall, the social texture of iftar. Get a sense of the day-to-day of Ramadan with this experiential guide.

A podcast dramatization of the schism that split Islam into Sunni and Shia

The events following Muhammad's death were a bitter succession dispute that divided Islam into its two major branches. You can relive them in this dramatic narrative from the Conflicted History podcast, which provides an immersive entry point into the issue.

Portugese diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during WWII

As the German army marched across France, Aristides de Sousa Mendes faced a choice: obey his government or follow his conscience—and risk everything

A survey of armed conflict in the Middle East

The decade following the Arab Spring has been one of bloodshed and violence in the Middle East. In 2011, protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya led to infighting and political fragmentation. Civil wars, foreign interventions, and the rise of...

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

A sample of quirky medieval era-book titles

The medieval book publishing industry wasn't quite so robust as our modern era's, but the mystical and satirical tomes coming out at that time still needed a name. Peruse this list of some of the quirkier of those titles, which reflects the era's literalness, theological interest, and downright silliness.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Take a 3D tour of the Hajj, Islam's annual pilgrimage to Mecca, undertaken by over 1.5 million Muslims.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

A vending machine run with Anthropic's AI went out of business after it was convinced to give away items for free and sell a video game console.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

When caught in the mouths of cardinal fish, seed shrimp release glowing, bioluminescent chemicals, which alert predators of the cardinal fish, prompting the shrimp's ejection.

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.

Some researchers have labeled nomophobia, the fear of being without your phone, as 'the phobia of the 21st century.'