Exile: A Novel - Hardcover

It is a reflection of the strength of a novel.

(Ryan Bigge The Toronto Star)

Exile is a brilliant tour de force, a refreshing antidote to the flag-waving fictions of multiculturalism.

(University of Toronto Quarterly)

Exile is social commentary at its subtle and witty best.

(Doretta Lau The Vancouver Sun)

This is a fable that feels very real. (Alex Bozikovic Eye Weekly)

Exile is a tour de force. I haven't been so amused and appaled by a fictional character since reading Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin. (Susan Evans Shaw The Hamilton Spectator)

This book will touch a nerve in the writing community. Not only does it reveal some of the motives of First World political networks, but it also examines cultural correctness and the universality of real freedom. Exile is not only a good read, it's a good-for-you read, particularly those given to benevolent acts of mercy. (Margaret Macpherson The Edmonton Journal)

Ireland's prose creates a vivid character in the flawed figure of Carlosand Ireland has deep insight into the lives of exiles. (Now Magazine)

Ireland's stint as president of PEN Canada undoubtedly opened her eyes to the tension between the artistic and political lives of writers around the world and the desire of Canadian cultural community to help (but only according to our rather bland and flat-footed rules). She paints these two solitudes with great wit and cunning observation.

(Browyn Drainie Amazon.ca)

"This is a wise, funny, sad, and compassionate book. Carlos's chagrin and pain are palpable, but Ireland holds out hope that as a clever man with a talent, he may transcend his shallow past and desperate present." (Maureen Garvie Quill & Quire)

Her characters are delightfully stereotypical, and she playfully puts people's prejudices and assumptions on display. As past president of PEN Canada, Ireland has cleverly and cheekily turned the work of that organization into folly, earning her a deserved nomination for a Governor General's Award for fiction.

(Danyael Halprin The Calgary Herald)

For Carlos Romero Estevez, freedom from danger means a life in exile. Rescued from his home in a Latin American military dictatorship -- where his writings have been banned and he is wanted by the state -- the poet and journalist is brought to a new home in Vancouver. His rescuers, a group devoted to helping oppressed writers, think they've found a hero, a posterboy. Carlos thinks he's found a new life, new freedom, and new, powerful friends. But soon everyone's illusions are dispelled, and Carlos finds life in exile to be a new kind of prison. His arranged job as a writer-in-residence at the university fails to produce the expected best-selling memoir. And Carlos begins to realise that his powerful new friends are simply unable to give him the kind of life he knew before his imprisonment, when he associated with the elite writers of his nation -- as well as notorious revolutionaries. In prose that is at once delicate and passionate, Ann Ireland's Exile is the work of an author in full control of her considerable talents. Nominated for the 2002 Governor-General's Award for Fiction, and the 2002 Rogers Trust Fiction Prize.