This collection of essays provides an overview of the enormous impact of the exilic experience on European literary culture and expression throughout the modern period. Focused principally on individual authors, singly or in pairs, the essays explore the nature of exile and its impact on authors and their work, primarily on the content and style of literary expression, but also on their critical, social, and political thought.
As one might expect, the volume contains essays on some of the century's most famous writers of fiction such as James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, and Milan Kundera. In addition, there are also essays which deal with writers who are perhaps more familiar for their impact on critical and social thought, such as Viktor Shklovsky, Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, and Arthur Koestler. Additional essays consider more recent authors including Romanian Norman Manea, Polish American Eva Hoffman, German British...