The Provocative Strangeness of Camus’s L’Etranger and Coetzee’s Disgrace

Abstract:Albert Camus’s L’Etranger and J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace are two of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century. In each text, a white male protagonist engages in a violent encounter with an individual identified as Other. In different ways, the protagonists are put on trial, yet neither expresses remorse. Why are these novels, with their provocative characters, so fascinating for twentieth and twenty-first-century readers? Meursault and Lurie initially arouse discomfort by appearing to divest others of their alterity, but they come to recognize and ultimately preserve the otherness of the characters with whom they are involved.