Camus wrote Le Malentendu in 1942 and 1943 in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in Nazi-occupied France. Originally the play was to have been entitled Budejovice after the city České Budějovice in Czechoslovakia where Camus stayed briefly during a European trip with his first wife in 1936.[1]
The play “is a highly subjective presentation by Camus of the human condition as he saw it in the desperate circumstances of 1942-43”.[2] It reflects several aspects of Camus's life: he had left Algeria, to which he was deeply attached, leaving his second wife and friends behind; he was depressed with tuberculosis; as well as living under threat of execution as a propaganda agent of the French Resistance.[2] Camus once described Le Malentendu as “the play that resembles me the most”.[1]
The plot of Le Malentendu resembles the newspaper article that the protagonist of Camus' 1942 novel The Stranger finds under his mattress in his prison cell: it is the story of a man who became rich abroad and comes home to his village where his sister and mother have a hotel. He doesn't reveal his identity (in order to surprise them later), and books a room as a guest. Because he is wealthy, his mother and sister murder him while he is asleep.
The plot is also an ironic reversal of the classical theme of the recognition of the brother, from the ancient Greek Electra plays and the New Testament story of the Prodigal Son.
