What Camus does so well in these stories is to show man at the limits of his existence. The moral, cultural, and artistic challenges presented are distilled to their purest form, without any extraneous matter. Much current fiction seems small when compared with these polished gems. "The Renegade," in which a Westerner captured by a demonic tribe comes to believe that "good is an idle dream," only to reject that thinking too late, is as harrowing as Heart of Darkness. "The Artist at Work" is a deft exploration of the nature of creativity and the leeches who attach to creators. In all of the stories a crystalline and direct prose style shines through.
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