Camus’s sojourn to Tipasa is analogous to the reprieve of Sisyphus from his rock. Encapsulated in the notion of Sisyphus as mythic hero is the existentialist ethic of the exigency of grace in the face of futile suffering. Because of his defiance of the gods, Sisyphus was condemned for perpetuity to roll a boulder up a steep hill, only to have it roll down again once he had reached the top. Camus, however, imagines Sisyphus happy during his descent. To be sure, it was "that breathing space" during his descent that produced the consciousness that is revealed in the sentence: "There is no sun without shadow."

The female Diasporan authors surveyed in this book–Mariama Bâ, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Buchi Emecheta, Beryl Gilroy, Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker–are linked both by their collective use of the trope abandonment in their literature, which is symbolic of the Diasporic condition of Blacks, and by their existentialist depiction of characters who, in contrast with the bad faith of others before the void, are endowed with that "special grace" in the face of futile suffering.

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