Imagined Foreign Lands In Camus' Fction

Albert Camus—20 centuries France author—is grown up in colony Algeria and accepted education by France here. The poor life and the beautiful nature are impressed Camus profoundly. To Camus, Algeria is hometown which means a lot. Algeria is the background of his much work, so does Arab people who are the key people in his novels. However, the French education and European culture make Camus is the writer with imperialism, and he defends French colonialism. Therefore, the relationship between the national ideology and the individuals is that the individuals are deeply influenced by national culture. The images of Algeria and Arab people in Camus'novel are very different from the real ones. The society structure of Algiers and Oran in his two novels The Stranger and The Plague is similar to the French. Besides, the image of the Arab people is obscure. The author makes them only as a function of narrative strategies to complete the plot in order to highlight the French roles. So we can say both Algeria and Arab people in these two novels are the exotic imagination of Camus. Thus, culture and literature, nation and individual are linked inseparably. To break the single study of literary text and place it the larger social context in globalization age has great significance.