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Voluntary/Involuntary Departures: The Complications of Exile and Belonging in Malcolm Cowley and Fawaz Turki

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Exile and Expatriation in Modern American and Palestinian Writing
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Abstract

This chapter argues that modern American expatriate writers left the US for Paris voluntarily in search of a better life opportunity and self-fulfilment, whilst Turki and his contemporaries were coerced into exile. This chapter further considers the treatment of the exile/home dichotomy by Cowley and Turki, showing that its collapse means loss of attachment or belonging to a place. This chapter shows that whereas the titles of Cowley’s and Turki’s works seem to entail entire repatriation, their repatriation is not completely attained on either psychic or physical levels. It suggests that the notion of return for both writers is transformed from being purely a physical return into the ability of an exile or expatriate to reintegrate or reclaim his/her original place.

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Qabaha, A.R. (2018). Voluntary/Involuntary Departures: The Complications of Exile and Belonging in Malcolm Cowley and Fawaz Turki. In: Exile and Expatriation in Modern American and Palestinian Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91415-2_2

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