AT THE HEART OF THIS BOOK lies a word that opens onto a world: exile. As a word, it can be defined quite easily. Exile means banishment from a country or a place of belonging, and most often it is politically motivated and punitive. So far, so good, until you read the description of exile written by the German poet Hilde Domin (1909–2006) upon returning from the Dominican Republic to Heidelberg in 1954, more than twenty years after fleeing Germany on the eve of the Nazi takeover: “Unverlierbares Exil, du trägst es bei dir, Wüste, einsteckbar” (Exile, impossible to lose, you carry it with you, a desert, pocket-sized). Compared to Domin’s description of exile as a lived reality, our working definition seems flat at best. Exile is unending, we learn from Domin, it exists independently of one’s place of banishment, and it deprives life of nutrients. For Domin, exile stands for loss, but it is a loss that lends fresh perspective on life. In fact, in her 1982 essay, “Heimat” (Home), which opens with a reference to her 1954 poetic description of exile, Domin asserts that exile holds the key to understanding human nature. Hence we should consider it carefully, listen to the voices of those who endured the fate of exile, and compare their stories to our own lives. Exile, to Domin, is exemplary: it offers us models by which to live and reveals patterns of humanity that we may recognize in ourselves.

Domin gives exile an elevated epistemological status, since it is through understanding exile that we acquire knowledge about the conditio humana itself. The essence of exile comes to the fore in what she coins “exemplarische Vertreibung” (exemplary expulsion): exile that, by virtue of its moral stature, becomes an exemplum, a story by which to live one’s life. “Die exemplarische Vertreibung, exemplarisch wie die der Ureltern, da lernt man alles, schlechthin alles, über das Menschsein, und über das ‘Ein-flüchtiger-Gast-sein’.