Rating: 
Summary: My least favorite of what Camus did....
Review: I've read out Camus: his philsophical treatises, his plays, his novels, his cahiers, etc. and been tremendously impressed by almost everything that he ever did. I find him brillaint, but even more importantly, humane. That having been said, I find the short pieces contained in Exile and the Kingdom (and, strangely, the French translation of the same..... he he) to be some of his most regrettable work....Not to quibble... or to say that these aren't that important or contain something of use.... but if I were a new Camus reader, I'd definately go and read the rest of his tremendous body of work before I settled down to read these..... my specific criticisms come in line with the rest of the negative reader reviews (i.e. somewhat lack plot or devices to hold interest, etc.)
Rating:
Summary: Acts rather feebly in conterpoint to "L'envers et l'endroit"
Review: 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
Rating: 
Summary: Amazing.
Review: This is one of my favorite books. All deep meaning and pointless over evaluation aside, these stories are amazing. The descriptions of the landscapes, the actions of the characters, the intense things that went on, were all described with amazing language. I loved how, expecially in "The Growing Stone" and "The Renegade" you feel as if you are in the world that is being described. The realness of these very strange situations is an amazing vacation of a sort, and shows the inherent beauty in reality.
Rating:
Summary: The Renegade
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: LET ME OUT OF HERE
Review: Well, here I am again with Albert Camus. This is the third review of one of his works that I've written. I thought The Stranger was a great work and so I went on to The Fall and found it lacking. I've found that Camus is at his best when he concentrates on a story instead of preaching to his audience. Yeah, you can put philosophical ideas in fiction but you have to clothe it deeply enough in story. In Exile and the Kingdom (1958), a book of 6 short stories comes closer to the storytelling brillance of The Stranger but doesn't quite pull it off. Most of the stories in the book are about people that are being repressed by society in one form or another. They have gotten sick of their lives and are on the cusp of breaking down or screaming out or surrendering to their fate. Some of them escape and some of the characters don't. The first story, "The Adulterous Woman" is about a woman who has been married too long and while visiting an Arab town begins to awaken her physical being to the sights and sounds of the desert and of other men. "The Renegade" shows what happens when a missionary priest is captured by a tribe of savages and is forced to worship a pagan idol. This is one of the more effective stories and reminds me of the first person style of The Fall. "The Silent Men" concerns us with one of the favorite pasttimes of Europeans, namely the labor dispute. It is about the relations between some barrelmakers and their boss. Not exactly high drama. In "The Guest", a schoolteacher on a remote mountain, isolated from civilization, is given the responsibility of escorting a murderer to the civil authorities. "The Artist at Work" is the greatest story in the book. It is about the continual conflict between an artist's desire to be a part of society and the need he has for solitude. The painter in this story gets married, has kids, tries to be a celebrity, and almost destroys his very reason for being. Almost everyone, even his disciples, are unknowingly killing him because they never allow him time to work. The last story in the book, "The Growing Stone" was almost completely a waste of time. I know it was about a French engineer going to a rainforest village to construct a flood prevention system but beyond that it got shaky. I know he went to one of their celebrations and saw something like a voodoo ceremony but beyond that I didn't have a clue as to what was going on. I'm sure it was one of those Heart of Darkness things where civilized European confronts dark forces of the jungle and loses. This book as a whole was OK. Nothing bad. Just Ok. The artist story was quite good even though it was a bit melodramatic and romantic. "The Renegade" I'll have to read again but I believe it to be quite masterful too. As for the other stories, I don't see that you would miss anything if you didn't read them. There just doesn't seem to be a lot going on in them. The characters aren't given enough to make us interested in them. In fact, I don't think any of these stories are essential to Camus' work or French literature. They were just average to me. Read The Stranger instead.
Rating:
Summary: Exile and the Kingdom
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: Exile and the Kingdom
Review: 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!
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