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. ( )

Hat elbeszélés a magányról. De hát mi másról írhatna egy egzisztencialista? A kiscicás történetek, úgy fest, nem kompatibilisek ezzel a filozófiai rendszerrel. (Bár el tudok képzelni novellát egy parttalan magányra ítélt kiscicáról. Ami azonban még megírásra vár.) Igazából csak egy történet nem tetszett: a Jonas, avagy a mester dolgozik c. opusz, amit nem is igen tudtam mire vélni, egy erős lezáráshoz vezető vontatott és jobbára érdektelen felvezetésnek éreztem. Viszont amikor Camus szereplőinek egzisztenciális magánya a gyarmatosító magányával párosul a gyarmatosítottak között, az mindig nagyon izgalmas. Láthatólag nagyon foglalkoztatja őt ez: hogy az európai ember a maga európaias kultúrájával milyen számkivetett tud lenni azok között, akiket pedig meghódított és uralma alá hajtott. De ezt az uralmat a hajára kenheti, mint ahogy hajára kenheti (gyakran ambivalens) vonzalmát is Algéria iránt, mert ez a vonzalom egyoldalú, sosem képes megrepeszteni a kitaszítottság burkát. Mondhatnánk, Camus algériai franciái olyan urak, akik - legalábbis időnként, lelkük mélyén - jobb szeretnének a szolgák közösségéhez tartozni, de a szolgák közössége túl finnyás ahhoz, hogy befogadja őket. Ez maradt nekik fegyverül - hogy kitaszíthatnak.

Ui.: Érdekes, hogy az utolsó elbeszélés lezárásában (Az eleven kő) a kibékíthetetlen ellentét - SPOILER! -mintha feloldást nyerne. Ez talán valamiféle bolond reményt tükrözhet, hogy a kultúrák között azért kialakulhat valamiféle párbeszéd. Persze ez az optimizmus - az életmű egészét tekintve - inkább csak egyszeri felvillanás, nem trend. ( )