Exiles and strangers

"Camus’s short career was difficult and his reputation remained controversial. Though the pubic warmed to his books, most of which became bestsellers in both France and the United States, critics and journalists began to take Camus seriously only after his popularity made it impossible to ignore him. And it is surprising that, with the flood of books and articles that followed this belated recognition of the man who, according to the citation of the Nobel judges, “illuminated the problems of the human conscience in our times,” critics have paid so little attention to the last book to appear in Camus’s lifetime: the collection of short stories entitled Exile and the Kingdom (L’Exil et le royaume)."

"Five of the six stories had appeared in the United States in various mass-circulation magazines before the collection was issued in book form in 1958. Critics tended to find fault with certain of the stories, to prefer others, and to ignore the collection as a unified work—thereby fragmenting its message. Professor Showalter assumes the thematic unity that Camus identifies in the title, and undertakes a systematic study of the individual stories for what can be learned from each as a separate work and from the frequently noted obscurity of their endings—a device that, Dr. Showalter argues, helps to explain Camus’s durable and general popularity. For where there is obscurity, it is admitted as a difficulty posed by problems that are murky, insoluble, and real—a difficulty, not just for the reader, but for the fictional character and, implicitly, Camus as well. The note of perplexity with which Camus’s stories always end virtually demands that the reader formulate extensions beyond the text into real plausability—into our world, not his fictional construct"--From publisher's description.