Once overshadowed by Sartre, Camus has proved the more durable novelist of the two. This collection of his work makes the reasons for his survival self-evident. In prose of bleak but piercing clarity, Camus cuts to the heart of each situation he describes. After The Outsider (also published in Everyman), The Plague is his most powerful novel, an account of heroic attempts to contain an epidemic in Algeria which becomes a parable of the human condition. In The Fall a Parisian lawyer tells his own tale of decline and self-discovery. Exile and the Kingdom consists of short stories which explore the existentialist predicament from various viewpoints. This volume also contains two important essays – ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ and ‘Reflections on the Guillotine’ – which elaborate themes of mortality, meaning and transcendence developed in Camus’ fiction.

About the Author

Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. His childhood was poor, although not unhappy. He studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, and became a journalist as well as organizing the Théâtre de l'équipe, a young avant-garde dramatic group.

Sartre paid tribute to him in his obituary notice: 'Camus could never cease to be one of the principal forces in our cultural domain, nor to represent, in his own way, the history of France and of this century.'