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Exile

A view of rooftops in St. Petersburg, Russia

Photo © Anna Badkhen. Used with the author's permission.

The Country Called Exile

By Anna Badkhen

Through the prism of Hisham Matar’s novel My Friends, Anna Badkhen considers the condition of exile—and its newfound relevance in her own life.

black and white drawing of a boy with smoke coming up behind him floating over a red mound

Julia Griffin, "Smoke." Copyright Julia Griffin

Three Poems

By Imran Sada’i

I sit on the shores of emptiness / and watch my soul foaming red

Translated from Uyghur by Joshua L. Freeman

MultimediaMultilingual

A black-and-white image of battered market kiosks

Photo copyright © Kseniya Fuchs

Conservation

By Kseniya Fuchs

I knew I was born here and I would die here.

Translated from Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella

Cereté, Córdoba

By Raúl Gómez Jattin

I love you all even more in exile

Translated from Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Olivia Lott

The Art of Expressing One’s Agony: An Interview with M. Raouf Bachir

By Alice Guthrie

In short, the ongoing war in Syria is not a revolution.

The Memory of Our Land: Writing in and from Exile

By Susan Harris

As these writers demonstrate, there is no typical exile, and no standard response to deracination.

Exile is Born at This Moment

When blood is exiled, / nothing binds it to the race.

Translated from Arabic by the author

Exilium Ergo Sum

By Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

It is impossible to find one's own path in literature without a certain verbal violence.

Translated from Spanish by Lawrence Schimel

Multilingual

The Poet Cannot Stand Aside: Arabic Literature and Exile

By M. Lynx Qualey

Exile has been one of the places where Arabic literature has been able to communicate most strongly across linguistic borders.

Exiled in Europe: An Interview with Three Women Writers

By Olivia Snaije

“Sometimes I feel like I’m a medium who brings ghosts back from the past.”

The Curse of the South

By Mohammad Ali Diriye

From now on I just have three compass points, not four.

Translated from Arabic by Xavier Luffin

On the Fourth Day

By Koulsy Lamko

Slowly but surely, exile erases us from the memory of our land.

Translated from French by Alexis Pernsteiner

Multilingual

Bag of the Nation

By Osama Alomar

The surprise shook me like an earthquake.

Translated from Arabic by C.J. Collins

Multilingual

Fragile States: Artwork from freeDimensional

By freeDimensional

A visual exploration of the physical and psychological experiences of persecution and forced displacement.

Multimedia

Poets of Protest

By Words Without Borders

Words Without Borders introduces Manal Al-Sheikh and Mazen Maarouf, two poets living in exile in Scandinavia.

A Voice in the Crowd: A Sketch

By Antonio Muñoz Molina

A Spanish exile in New York hears his past calling out to him in this story by Spanish writer Antonio Muñoz Molina.

Translated from Spanish by Esther Allen

Is This Home?

By Zakaria Mohammad

For the Israelis, these hours were needed so that each and every returnee would understand the truth they wanted understood: you are coming to place yourself under our heel.

Translated from Arabic by Michael K. Scott

Photo of the Oudezijds Kolk canal in Amsterdam

Bert Kaufmann from Roermond, Netherlands, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

From “The Ministry of Pain”

By Dubravka Ugrešic

Instead of talking, they seem to be patting each other with words, spreading a soothing, sonorous saliva over one another.

Translated from Croatian by Michael Henry Heim

Freedom Can Be a Nightmare: An Interview with Kader Abdolah

By Frits Abrahams

An exile's life is unstable. Ruled by fear, especially when you're so deeply involved with a language.

Translated from Dutch

An Empty Room

Was there anything else worth seeing? Why was I the only one hiking?

Translated from Chinese by Toming Jun Liu