Caroline Moorehead
The Language of Exile
The Ministry of Pain
By Dubravka Ugresic (Translated by Michael Henry Heim)
Saqi 240pp £9.99 order from our bookshop
Anthropologists, it seems, have coined a term to describe what happens when an emigrant, apparently well adjusted to life in a foreign country, is abruptly consumed by an overwhelming need to go home. They call this individual a ‘sleeper’, after the word used for dormant spies in Cold War novels, ready to respond to a sudden command. Some of these awakened emigrants return precipitately to the countries of their birth, though few remain there, choosing exile once again. Others never make the journey, but prefer to inhabit parallel lives, projecting their pasts onto the screens of their new identities.
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