As some of you may know, I pick a topic to learn about every month, and arrange a slate of books around it. I'd really like to do a month on dissident and exiled writers, but I'm turning up, like, Mandelstam, Joseph Brodsky, and Ovid, and that's it. Any other names I should know? - ThreadSky

judedoyle.bsky.social • 46 days ago

As some of you may know, I pick a topic to learn about every month, and arrange a slate of books around it. I'd really like to do a month on dissident and exiled writers, but I'm turning up, like, Mandelstam, Joseph Brodsky, and Ovid, and that's it. Any other names I should know?

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cityinahole.bsky.social•46 days ago

Baruch Spinoza? Expelled from the Jewish community for continuously questioning Jewish doctrine.

braak.bsky.social•46 days ago

Not an endorsement of his conclusions, but Solzhenitsyn probably worth reading

gomijacogeo.bsky.social•46 days ago

The German Exilliteratur page is very complete (much better than the en. page). https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exilliteratur

inigopurcell.bsky.social•45 days ago

Seconding Hisham Matar's "My Friends". It is very beautiful and thoughtful.

inigopurcell.bsky.social•45 days ago

Also Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We"

jlrlawton.bsky.social•46 days ago

Spinoza, maybe? He was permanently expelled from his Jewish community rather than exiled though.

ninoxe.bsky.social•46 days ago

Marjane Satrapi ? I'm not usually into graphic novels but Persepolis is really good (and the movie adaptation is great too!).

alexjenkinspoet.bsky.social•46 days ago

Hermann Broch was arrested by the Nazis in Austria; his friends helped secure his release, and he wrote "The Death of Virgil" while in exile in the United States.

alexjenkinspoet.bsky.social•46 days ago

Rather, finished and published D of V in the US: he also worked on it while incarcerated.

emily-today.bsky.social•46 days ago

Anna Akhmatova?

lapanique.bsky.social•46 days ago

I don't think he was exiled because he was in prison, but Solzhenitsyn comes to my mind as the classic 20c dissident?

lapanique.bsky.social•46 days ago

Also Hisham Matar, who writes about it but it was his father who was a dissident and in exile (though this makes the whole family exiled). I can vouch for this one personally though, unlike S. Matar is an incredible writer.

unprovoked.net•46 days ago

Wild guess: Ma Jian, b. 1953. There's a PEN International connection there. Semi/self-exiled for years, but he was flatly denied entry from Hong Kong into China about 15 years ago. I think his books are still outright banned there.

margauxb.bsky.social•46 days ago

Victor Hugo, a French writer in exile during the Second Empire

wishda.bsky.social•46 days ago

Dante.

wishda.bsky.social•46 days ago

Rushdie’s another good one.

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