ABSTRACT
The outer wave of exile is seen clearly, if unhappily, in the travels and travails of the dispossessed. The inner wave, the sense of exile that radically shapes the interior lives of those affected by it, is far more pervasive and lingering, and it is this aspect, and aspects, of exile this book explores. The book proffers two important claims about the impact of exile on the individual. First, the condition initiates an endless journey: the exile is a traveler, a wayfarer, a wanderer, an individual whose uprooted life is defined by movement and pathway rather than by stasis and stable identity. Second, and in seeming contrast to the first premise, the exile is always looking for home, attempting in new lands to establish himself or herself as newly at home. Exilic identity is always glancing back, searching nostalgically for that which was lost and can never be wholly regained, irrespective of reception and hospitality.
