Cultural Writing. Essays. Translated from the French by Steve Light with a preface by Albert Camus. Jean Grenier was a French philosopher with a rigorous philosophical intelligence that gave him an artistic and literary sensibility. Islands includes some of his most remarkable writings and philosophical speculations and was first published in 1933 in an edition of five essays. The revised edition, published in 1948, included six essays and a preface by Albert Camus. This translation is based on the third translation published in 1959. Grenier has a duality of meaning in his essays enabling him to write a memoir on his cat and have it also be about the nature of death as well. This depth in his essays makes his writing worthy of exploration.