Is This An Overview?
A collection of short stories about choices that need to be made. Each story reflects the complexity of values and identities. Choices that challenge the values of the character. Challenge the character’s loyalty and belonging. Choices that are about change. Each choice is bound in conflict, a personal dilemma that effects who the person is, wants to become, or has no choice but to be. In each story, the character is both part of and exiled from the people or places they love. Their interactions indicate their struggle to reconcile the opposing demands on who they are. The characters come from different backgrounds, have different lives, and share their different experiences. The stories are a reflection of the author’s political values, given rise due to people’s conditions.

Caveats?
The writing quality of the stories is mixed. The stories are short, therefore have limited details. But, what the stories have is depth of meaning. The stories raise valuable questions about values.

Review for: The Adulterous Wife:
Janine and Janine’s husband Marcel are traveling to sell Marcel’s fabrics directly to a community. A story told from the perspective of Janine. During their travel, Janine reflects on what has become of Janine’s life. Although Janine was resistant to the trip, Janine’s values become manifest based on what Janine sees. Janine’s and Marcel’s wants have become to diverge, with Janine wanting a more traditional life. Janine and Marcel have different ancestry as Janine is Arabic while Marcel’s predecessors came from France, which can cause some of Marcel’s remarks to create a conflict between who Janine is and willing to be with Marcel. Janine makes choices that test Janine’s faith. How will Janine reconcile Janine’s roots and Marcel?

Review for The Renegade, or A Confused Mind:
This story is told from the thoughts of the narrator, whose tongue had been cut out due to a betrayal. Written in a manner to indicate that something is wrong with the narrator. Something wrong with how the narrator thinks. The narrator wants vengeance, and recounts what the vengeance was for and how a situation enabled the narrator to take vengeance. The narrator’s loyalty is constantly being tested, and the narrator betrays. The narrator was a missionary, who had been turned through torture. Wanting vengeance against those associated with prior beliefs. But taking vengeance requires another betrayal. Who will the narrator betray?

Review for The Voiceless:
Yvars must work hard for there are those who depend on Yvars. But the barrel making business is going through economic trouble. Yvars considers changing professions, but does not want to give up on a mastered profession. The employees, which include Yvars, at the barrel making business go on strike. But the strike fails. They must go back to work, without any changes to the employee’s economic situation. But change does happen. They lose their dignity. The employees have worked at the business for a long time, and the employer is considered decent. The employer wants friendly interactions, to reconcile, but reconciliation is not forthcoming. How will Yvars resolve the conflicts?

Review of The Guest:
Daru is a schoolteacher who would prefer not to take sides in a conflict. A prisoner is brought to Daru with orders that Daru must transport the prisoner. But participating in turning in the prisoner would mean taking a side. While the prisoner is a guest of Daru, the prisoner has many opportunities to escape. Which Daru would welcome. But the prisoner does not escape. Any choice Daru makes about the prisoner, has ramifications about what community Daru will be a part of and what community will be a threat. Daru is with the communities, but feels exiled from the communities. Maybe there is a way that Daru can find to keep neutrality. What should Daru do?

Review of Jonas, or The Artist at Work:
Jonas’s life has been bound by a belief in luck, that nothing was through merit. And Jonas has been very lucky in life. Reflecting how Jonas’s situation came to be, Jonas sees every problem as having given Jonas a favorable situation. Misfortune with parents earned Jonas a devoted friend, and a job in publishing at which Jonas dabbled in painting. Painting became a passion that occupied all of Jonas’s attention until an accident that prevented Jonas from plaiting for a time. As Jonas’s attention was not preoccupied with painting while healing, Jonas was able to notice Louise who would become Jonas’s wife. Louise is very industrious and would enable Jonas to spend Jonas’s days painting, which eventually enabled Jonas’s work to be discovered. But as Jonas’s fame rose, Jonas’s attention becomes more divided. People wanted to talk to Jonas. Disciples wanted to teach Jonas. Letters needed to be replied to. With so much attention being taken, Jonas’s work suffers, friends and family are neglected. Jonas tries to please everyone, but there is not much Jonas can do with limited time and energy. How will Jonas decide how to spend attention?

Review of The Growing Stone:
D’Arrast is a French engineer in Brazil for a project, which would prevent flooding and provide the poor community with jobs. For what the d’Arrast is going to do for the community, d’Arrast is received with gratitude and appreciation by the elite. But d’Arrast is uncomfortable being deferred to. While d’Arrast visits the locals, d’Arrast becomes immersed in the community. Finding belonging with them. D’Arrast meets a cook who during a life-threatening situation made a promise that should the cook survive, the cook would carry a heavy stone. The night before the cook needed to carry the stone, there was a celebration. The cook wanted d’Arrast to come to the celebration, in part to make sure the cook left early. Otherwise the cook would not be able to carry out the promise. But at the celebration, the cook did not want to leave. This made carrying the stone a further struggle for the cook, who could not finish carrying the stone to its destination. D’Arrast seeks to help the cook. But, the cook belongs to a different community than those who have been deferring to d’Arrast. What should d’Arrast do? ( )

There is a saying in Urdu language which goes "دھوبی کا کُتّا گَھر کا نَہ گھاٹ کا", and roughly translates in English to "A washerman's dog neither belongs to his house nor to the washing area". This sentence is often used for people who are banished by the society and have no place they can call home. Exile and the Kingdom is a collection of 6 short stories and deals with such "washerman's dogs" who are on a quest to find their kingdom and end their state of exile.

The short stories in the book cover different societies and demographics to paint the state of exile as a universal phenomenon, but this central concept and the journey it's supposed to take the protagonists on doesn't show its complete strength in every story. The book manages to find its footing in the second half, but the first half provides a steady warm-up to that, and there are substantial takeaways from every protagonist's journey. ( )

I read this over 20 years ago during my Camus phase. Crisp writing with a sense of desert the stories were a look into the lives of people who were always yearning, like most of us. My opinions of the story changed. The Growing Stone was still powerful but the Adulterous Woman really stood out, as did Silent Men, and the Artist at Work. ( )

A bit difficult to make out what is meant by 'Exile' except precisely Golgotha. It could be said, and not without cause, that Camus writes more on the Christian subject than even O'Connor. Typical for the eminently "competent" author, these stories are appropriate work for translation (cannibalization) in your high school classroom.

Ready, and expecting six "psychological investigations" in monologue, I was pleasantly surprised to discovery that such endeavors, while still present, have gone incognito in the text. These conversations persist in the implied space between actions for the most part - a refreshing approach. Unfortunately, the substance of what he's working with is also abridged, and the best stories here are the ones he leaves be (The Growing Stone, The Adulterous Woman). Where the dialectic emerges closest to the surface we have the more accessible narratives, and also the worst (The Artist at Work, The Renegade). An ostensibly worse version of The Guest, the skimpy and hastily-constructed The Silent Men is a guilty pleasure for how he makes duty bitter. ( )

Exile and the Kingdom is a collection of six obstruse and challenging short stories that are, for the patient reader, ultimately rewarding ones. Each of the stories presents a scenario which communicates author Albert Camus' ideas of absurdist philosophy, with their protagonists each at a muted crossroads in their lives. There's an impressively complete air of quiet desolation hanging over each of the stories, a sense of struggle matched by the hope of something more (we must imagine Sisyphus happy) – or, as one of the stories puts it, "he still had to discover what he had not yet clearly understood, although he had always known it and had always painted as if he knew it" (pg. 112). Hence the title of the collection: they are each in a sort of exile but are seeking out the kingdom.

This sense of latent discovery extends to the reader, who has to be patient with the stories' slow-build and their heavily-laden prose style. Each one grips, quietly, once you commit to them, but they take a while to get there. Because of this, and the sophistication of the ideas – many of which only become clear after much reflection from the reader, and perhaps a bit of googling – this book certainly won't be for everyone. His novel The Plague remains the most accessible introduction to Camus; the apparent brevity of the short stories in Exile and the Kingdom proves to be something of a Siren song. ( )