If the three underlying principles of the short story are those of delimiting, focusing and economizing (Gratton and Le Juez, 1994: 2), we may wish to add one more crucial dimension, to underline not its ‘lonely voice’ (Frank O'Connor saw the short story as written for the ‘individual, solitary, critical reader’ (1963: 14)) but its gregariousness, its ‘esprit vagabond’ [roaming spirit] (Chevrier, 1992: 7). It may be that the sociable and gregarious nature of the short story leads to an instability of meaning and interpretation, for which the short story plays a perfect role, but this is not to be the focus of this article, except to underline that it allows for a dialogue with other short stories. In comparing a short story written by two writers during the Franco-Algerian War, arguably on either side of the national divide, we might expect to find rigid ideas and clear demarcation lines. In fact, by placing Albert Camus's ‘L'Hôte’ next to Mohammed Dib's ‘La Fin’, published in 1957 and 1966 respectively, we will see that both ambivalence and ambiguity are possible epithets for both stories, which allow the short story to duck and dive staunchly held positions and ideologies.

If these elements can all be traced in Dib's short-story writing, this is less likely in Camus's oeuvre, which produced only one set of (long) short stories, L'Exil et le royaume (1957), in which ‘L'Hôte’ famously appeared.