SOURCE: Storey, Michael L. “The Guests of Frank O'Connor and Albert Camus.” Comparative Literature Studies 23, no. 3 (fall 1986): 250-62.

In the following essay, Storey finds similarities between Frank O'Connor's “Guests of the Nation” and Camus's “The Guest.”

To the casual reader of fiction, the works of Irishman Frank O'Connor and those of Frenchman Albert Camus must seem worlds apart. The heavy, existentialist stories of Camus—The Stranger, The Fall, “The Guest,”—fix him as the serious writer of twentieth-century exile and alienation, whereas the light, humorous stories that O'Connor is best known for—“First Confession,” “The Drunkard,” “My Oedipus Complex,” among others—mark him in the public's eye as the masterful comic writer of Irish realism. All the more odd it is, then, to find two stories—one by each of these writers—that are remarkably similar in theme, setting, plot construction, character portrayal, and tone, as well as...