ABSTRACT
Wilhelm Raabe was born in 1831 in Lower Saxony and spent most of his life in that region; Wilkie Collins was born in London in 1824 and spent his life there. Raabe's novel Alni Telfan oder Die Heimkehr vom Mondgebirge focuses on the return of a man to his home town after years of exile in Africa. The comparison between Raabe and Collins was first made by Arno Schmidt, whose interest in Wilkie Collins went as far as producing a German translation of The Woman in White. The most important affinity between Raabe and Collins is their use of multiple perspectives in order to narrate a story. Perhaps one reason why Raabe's narrative is so sceptical about exile is that it does not seem as if exile has anything genuinely new to offer. Another possible explanation is that exile, as an existential category, is not always distinct from 'returning home'.
