Calamities of Exile (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Lawrence Weschler
- First Published: 1997
- Type of Work: Biography
- Time of Work: c. 1916-1998
- Setting: The United States, Iraq, England, Czechoslovakia, South Africa, France, and Spain
- Principal Characters: Kanan Makiya, Jan Kavan, Breyten Breytenbach
- Genres: Nonfiction, Biography
- Subjects: Dictators, Family or family life, Communism or communists, Prisoners, Exile or expatriates, Espionage or spies, Totalitarianism, Dissent or dissenters
- Locales: France, United States, Spain, England, South Africa, Czechoslovakia, Iraq
Exile was originally a form of punishment. The archetypal Babylonian exile was a punishment for Jewish uprisings. Among the ancient Greeks exile was a punishment for homicide (see, for example, Oedipus Rex). Among the ancient Romans, voluntary exile was an alternative to capital punishment. Around the eighteenth century, Europe began to exile its criminals to penal colonies in America, Australia, and Siberia. Throughout history, political exile has been a punishment for being on the wrong side.
In some ways, exile is a punishment worse than death: one lives on without the...
[The entire page is 2045 words long]
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