The Fall, Exile, and the Kingdom Author: [French] Albert Camus Translator: Shen Zhiming Publisher: Shanghai Translation Publishing House

★ Works by Nobel Prize winner Camus

★ Includes the novel "Sinking" and the short story collection "Exile and the Kingdom"

(*In the original plan, "The Fall" was originally a chapter in "Exile and the Kingdom", but due to its length, it was published as a separate book. Therefore, this Chinese version will publish the two parts together.)

"The Fall" is a painful monologue by the protagonist Jean-Baptiste Clamence that directly hits the human nature. In the Mexico City bar in Amsterdam, Clamence, who calls himself "the judge-confessor", looks back on his past years. He was once a practicing lawyer, and he lived a prosperous life with fame and money. But one night when he was crossing a bridge, a woman jumped into the river behind him and committed suicide. He blamed himself for not saving her, and thus began his road to fall... He realized that his past was all false, and realized that the fall of human nature is irredeemable.

Exile and the Kingdom consists of six short stories. Although the content of each story is different, the protagonists feel frustrated in their daily lives and are struggling to find the "kingdom", that is, the meaning and happiness of life, so they feel lonely, like "exile".

Albert Camus (1913-1960) is a famous French novelist, essayist and playwright, and a literary master of absurd existential philosophy. In 1957, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature for "his passionate and calm exposition of the questions that contemporary times raise for human conscience", and he is one of the youngest Nobel Prize winners in history.

In his novels, plays, essays and treatises, Camus profoundly reveals the loneliness of man in an alien world, the increasing alienation of the individual from himself, and the inevitability of sin and death. However, while revealing the absurdity of the world, he was not desperate or depressed. He advocated resistance in the absurdity and adherence to truth and justice in despair. He pointed out a free and humanitarian path for the world other than religious belief and totalitarianism. His courage to face the bleakness of life and his fearless spirit of "knowing it is impossible but doing it anyway" made him the spokesperson of his generation and the spiritual mentor of the next generation not only in France, but also in Europe and eventually in the world after World War II.