Customer Reviews

Exile and the Kingdom

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A riveting and utterly haunting book, this anthology of Camus's short stories is not only my favorite of all his works, but it is one of the best books I have ever read.

The underlying theme in each of his stories is exile, whether it be spiritual, physical, or mental. From the tale of the school teacher put in care of an Arab prisoner to the missionary who finds himself worshipping a cruel graven image, each tale pits man in a pivotal moment in time which defines his future. This is at the very heart of existentialism, a predominant literary vehicle of contemporary authors.

The tales are simple in style, yet vividly written and rich in detail. You'll find youself shocked by the tragic irony in each of the characters, and haunted by the stories for years to come.

To understand the spiritual struggle demonstrated in "The Renegade" we must separate the narrator from the narration -- because the narrator is mad, driven so through torture dealt by the very natives he hoped to convert. This is important because the narrator wished to honor God. He believed the best way to witness was to endure suffering.

But he fails miserably; his torture is unbearable. Ultimately, the narrator concludes, "I had been misled, truth is square, heavy, thick, it does not admit distinctions, good is an idle dream, an intention constantly postponed and pursued with exhausting effort, a limit never reached, its reign is impossible" (59).

The moral of the narration seems to be that no excuse justifies the narrator's suffering. If God himself is unfair, the world makes no ultimate sense. And this cannot be because it violates the promise made in Genesis. Silence, symbolized by the narrator's severed tongue, seems an appropriate response to this God.

"The Renegade" suggest that we are not made in God's image, but rather that we are instead fashioned after Tantalus: the thing we most desire dances forever before our eyes, yet forever beyond our grasp.

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.

I believe that this book should be read along with the Fall, for as Camus intended, the two works lend insight into each other. I don't believe it's quite accurate to boil these stroies down into existential philosophy and social crticism. There is something to Camus' work which speaks to more hidden aspirations. This is an incredible collection of stories, who's diversity defies Hemingway. However, unlike the other reviews, I don't believe that the stories are about exile in such a simple way. Many of the charcters seem to be liberated at the end of their stories...or, imprisoned. Either way, the exile involved here, I think, may have more to do with the kingdom of God. Take that as you will. This is a strong piece of literature.

I find "Exile and the Kingdom" to be Camus' best book, and here's why. Here, towards the end of his life, he finally seemed to be sifting his philosophies from his characters; making real people turn up in unrealistic situations, hence making a point about either that character or society. What results is very strong fiction, be it the adultress in the desert, the teacher who cannot ignore a revolution, the artist locked up in his loft trying to find the perfect idea, or the islanders who must carry a stone to show their faith. Camus is blunt about what he feels are our shortcomings; but he lets his characters make their mistakes as people. Thus, years later, you find yourself still pondering these stories and seeing them reflected in the world around you. Profound, and uplifting in their own downbeat way. Considering that the novel he never finished, the recently published _The First Man_ is autobiography, it seems Camus felt he had said what he came to say about existentialism and society

Exile and Kingdom is the chrysalis out of which The Fall (his great 3rd novel) formed.The stories depict various forms of exile,isolation,alienation.Four are set in Algeria,one of which "The Guest" gets most directly to Camus's present situation and dilemma: how do you treat the Arabs if you are a French Algerian?Daru is a teacher and is asked to keep an Arab prisoner in his house,one who killed his brother,then take him to the nearest town.There is a sense of the native Arab population on the move,in revolt,ready to rise up against their colonist masters.The story is unsettling in light of Camus's treatment by fellow French intellectuals like Sartre and his position as a pied-noir in Algeria.Camus refused to take sides in the conflict.Daru like Camus is exiled by the choices he has made. Daru does not turn in the prisoner,he sets him on his way to make his own choice,freedom or imprisonment.This kindness may result in death.The village was beginning to stir.

The Adulterous Woman is disenchanted with her husband on a business trip through Algeria,she still feels attractive to other men,but the vigor has gone out of their marriage.She communes with the night stars,identifies with the nomads she can see from the fort as they aren't tied to the town.She is no longer an extension of her husband,she is freed to embrace the wider world.The native Algerians are disdained by Marcel,her husband.In The Renegade the exiled ex-priest narrator is waiting in the desert,a prisoner of a desert tribe,who have cut out his tongue,having become converted to the dionysiac religion of his masters. The narrator had been a missionary to the tribes of Taghasa,he now waits to kill the new missionary. He disowns Christ, refusing to believe in his righteousness and declares that the Fetish and the power of hatred are the only true and flawless powers in the world.Camus depicts religion as the disjointed absurdity of a disordered mind.

The Silent Men is about a labour dispute in a Cooper's shop in the Algeria of Camus's youth. They have recently returned to work after a failed strike. When the owner's daughter has a serious, acute illness requiring an ambulance, the men do not offer any words of condolence. Where once there had been a sense of being all part of a whole, they no longer feel such for the owner who refused them.The next story is about the successful artist,Jonas, who ceases to be able to paint.The tone reflects Camus's bitterness and sense of isolation at the time of the quarrel with Sartre and his circle.In his new solitude Camus would never show more solidarity, giving way to the French equation/ pun solitaire-solidaire,the only word(s) written on a blank canvas by Jonas.The last story,The Growing Stone,is set on a Brazilian coastal town.A visiting French engineer,D'Arrast,finds a sort of mystical communion with the remote people.Many of the scenes in Exile and Kingdom have a dream-like quality.The `Kingdom' in these stories is one of fantasy.The exile is real and from it stems the fantasy of the kingdom.In the stories solidarity pitches up against solitude.The stories are not easy reads,you feel Camus is trying to work on themes in miniature,but they fascinate anyone who has read his more well known novels and essays.

This work of short stories reminds me why I love reading Camus so much. The stories are entertaining and compelling on their face, yet there is so much more meaning just beneath the surface that the reader can come across new meaning with every reading. Camus requires a lot from the reader if you want to really understand what he has to say, but it is well worth the effort to dig deeper than the surface to find the meaning behind the words.

It's hard to pick a favorite story from this collection, but for me it would have to be The Guest. It is a story of a school master in the back country in Algeria, probably pre-revolution. His is a solitary existence. Alone among the natives, but not a part of them, he works for the government but is so far removed that he isn't really a part of it either. I won't give too much away, but what I like is the hopelessness of the story. The school master rejects "civilization" and refuses to take an active role in the destruction of a native who has committed a crime. In the end the school master sticks to his beliefs, but saves no one and alienates himself from everyone. In the beginning his is a solitary existence, but by the end his decisions made no difference, and actually cause him even further isolation. It is not a feel good story, but it really stuck with me.

The Growing Stone is a story with similar themes as The Guest, but with a much different conclusion. What really struck me with this story is the opening. The main character is stealing away in the middle of the night like a theif or a bandit. He, a European, is waiting at a river for a barge to carry his car across. The crossing on a barge carried along by natives using such a primitive means of crossing, while the protagonist remains in his car becomes an interesting juxtaposition later on. The reader gets the impression he is running or escaping from something, and the crossing of the river is a great metaphor for how this story plays out. This is another story of rejection, but unlike The Guest this story has redemption and acceptance as well. It is a very close second to The Guest.

The Renegade was a nasty story that was certainly right up my alley. In the end the only story I didn't really enjoy was The Artist At Work. I'm not sure why I didn't like, but I felt it was to drawn out, and the themes didn't really connect with me which made the story seem unnecessarily long. I'm not suggesting the work isn't good, but just that I didn't like it.

Other than that one story I enjoyed this entire collection. I enjoy Camus' work immensely and this one was no exception. Be prepared to go deeper than the surface and really dig in to find the meaning behind the stories and you will be rewarded. I recommend this collection.

This volume of short fiction by Albert Camus is easy to read and very provoking. The stories contained are varied and unique, but the message is similar to all. Man lives in exile. He constantly searches for a path home, spiritually and in physical terms. This message can be chilling because exile means loss, primarily psychological. The realization of this void is what makes them worthwhile.

You get the first impression of the book in the first chapter when Camus states (paraphrasing) that we are all free lords of our own strange kingdom. We control our thoughts and our actions; whether the outcome be our view of our Kingdom, we all believe there is one, and we are constantly trying to obtain it. Though the book is a bit easy, it was a good refresher of Camus...how liberating he can be sometimes!

The short stories of "Exile and the Kingdom" remain, in my humble opinion (and of course in the opinion of Camus scholars, viz. Champigny, Fitch and C.C. O'Brien) stylistically-varied writing exercises more so than a response to "L'envers et l'endroit" ("The wright side and the wrong side", written in the same format 20 years earlier). As the title indicates, and as "Jonas", one the stories so blatanly (if not too dogmatically) alludes to, the metatheme is that of solitude v. solidarity (it sounds better in French due to rhyming...). Let me elucidate: in the context of the Algerian War - and certainly Camus' quandary during the latter - the perennial "no man's land" stance of an isolated, disliked-by-Sartre, disliked-by-the-pieds-noirs, writer makes for the premises of "Jonas" or "La femme adultère" ('the adulteress wife'). What intrigued me was how Camus reversed the cultural notions of "exile" and "kingdom" in making of the latter one of 'here and now', amongst men and without G-d, as opposed to an other-worldy 'kingdom' which Camus sees above all as some sort of solitude - a man praying alone, naked in front of the universe - (think of the jesuit-fetichist in the second text). The biblical allusions are also of course blatant: Simon (last story) makes the entire text too easily a roman-à-clef type of read; the fetichist-priest quotes Jesus, etc. Furthermore, characterization is almost nill (for those of you familiar with Clamence in "the Fall" or Meursault in "The Stranger", this work is entirely different - except maybe for the incredible second short story)in the sense that the individual stories, one senses, are more of "varied writing exercises." I love Camus, and certainly do not intend to disparage him any longer - for those of you who do expect a "Myth of Sisyphus" ideology to be hiding in each short story, this is not the case (nor should it be; it is not a "roman à thèse" where everything must be interpreted in light of the Absurd). Finally, "exile and the kingdom" remains, on a more positive note, an accessible introduction to one of the facets of Camus' thought for those who may not wish to indulge themselves in his war writings or 'The Myth of Sisyphus". Yet I must add that the stories do not function as a "résumé" of the author's thought, and rightly so. I do recommend a reading of the stories perhaps after an exploration of "The Fall" as they were all intended for publication with it. This is perhaps one of the most interesting factors in glancing at each story and figuring out why Camus chose such and such locations, mode of narration, style, format, and order. These stories are also, I might add, largely ignored by literary (Camus) critics and so ought to be read regardless... -Lisa