Short stories for philosophers, literature snobs, and lovers of the unusual

books:


	• Exile and the Kingdom (Vintage V-281) Albert Camus Vintage Books, 1965 - 213 pages average customer review:based on 16 reviews
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highly recommended

A Good Selection of Both Solid and Eclectic Works

As a point of reference, I have read most of Camus's major works. The present collection is an interesting mixture of six short stories. The stories are more varied than his novels which tend to reflect his philosophy of the absurd. I thought the present stories were among his best works. The story The Guest is outstanding, two or three of the stories are excellent, and the others are good or are at least interesting.

Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) was a French writer and philosopher. He is often associated with existentialism, but Camus rejected any ideological classification. Camus was a young recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature when he became the first African-born writer to receive the award in 1957. He died in a car crash only three years after receiving the award. He was a social activist and Communist, and fought with the French resistance in WWII. Later he rejected Communism. The present book was copyrighted in 1957.

The present novel contains six works:
- The Adulterous Woman
- The Renegade
- The Silent Men
- The Guest
- The Artist at Work, and
- The Growing Stone.

I had previously read The Guest in other collections of short stories. It is one of his best short works and it it is about an Arab prisoner who had murdered a family member and who is now transferred to a schoolmaster, Daru, at an isolated outpost in the desert of North Africa. Daru is supposed to deliver the prisoner to a jail the next day.

The Silent Men are a group of workers who have returned to work at a barrel factory after a strike, and who are not interested in talking to the boss who stopped the strike. The Artist at Work is about the rise and fall of a young painter. The Growing Stone is about a civil engineer on an assignment in the coastal jungles of South America, while the remaining two are set in desert towns of North Africa, and are the most eclectic and imaginative stories in the group.

The stories are all interesting and I enjoyed the reads.

The Stranger and perhaps The Fall remain as his best works and they are must reads, followed by The Plague. Those works include his use of irony and philosophical views. Also, Camus has written some good drama and non-fiction. The present work shows the broader range of his writing skills and is an entertaining set of stories.

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Short stories for philosophers, literature snobs, and lovers of the unusual

Albert Camus, born in Algeria in 1913, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and died three years later, but his writings live on. This collection of six unusual, strange-endinged stories will probably be of interest to a wide range of short story fans. Sometimes seemingly vague and symbolic (and with odd titles and endings), they are thoroughly enjoyable and readable. Though similar in complexity, subject matter and settings vary greatly: a woman joins her fabric-selling husband on a business trip, a detongued former missionary awaits his replacement, barrel makers strike, a prisoner is foisted on a schoolmaster, an artist works amidst ever-changing chaos, and an engineer visits inhabitants near the site of a future dam. Exile and the Kingdom is an excellent, strange, brief book. Other strange short stories: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami.

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A gathering of some of Camus' finest short stories

Justin O'Brien's translation renders beautifully into English six of Camus' finest stories, including the masterpiece "The Guest."

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4

These six stories, written at the height of Camus' artistic powers, all depict people at decisive, revelatory moments in their lives. Translated by Justin O'Brien.

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