Exile and the Kingdom

Exile and the Kingdom is a collection of six short stories in which Camus contends that humans are lonely at heart whether they live happy lives in their milieux. There are times when they suddenly realize it and are never the same. An apparently happy wife tries to fathom her true self when she spends a night in a desert; a man loses his tongue in a House of the Fetish; a barrel maker and his laborers are fighting for survival; a French school teacher in Algeria is tasked with conveying an Arab prisoner to the police headquarters; an artist is spending a dream life among his fans; a French engineer helps a Brazilian native carry his colossal burden. Set in Algeria, France and Brazil, these stories are Camus’s masterpieces and rarefied examples of “Absurdism,” as he called his philosophical thought.