content: Albert Camus, born in Algeria in 1913, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 and died three years later, but his writings live on. This collection of six unusual, strange-endinged stories will probably be of interest to a wide range of short story fans. Sometimes seemingly vague and symbolic (and with odd titles and endings), they are thoroughly enjoyable and readable. Though similar in complexity, subject matter and settings vary greatly: a woman joins her fabric-selling husband on a business trip, a detongued former missionary awaits his replacement, barrel makers strike, a prisoner is foisted on a schoolmaster, an artist works amidst ever-changing chaos, and an engineer visits inhabitants near the site of a future dam. Exile and the Kingdom is an excellent, strange, brief book. Other strange short stories: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami.