The Mind In Exile

A unique look at Thomas Mann’s intellectual and political transformation during the crucial years of his exile in the United States In September 1938, Thomas Mann, the Nobel Prize–winning author of Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain, fled Nazi Germany for the United States. Heralded as “the greatest living man of letters,” Mann settled in Princeton, New Jersey, where, for nearly three years, he was stunningly productive as a novelist, university lecturer, and public intellectual. In The Mind in Exile, Stanley Corngold portrays in vivid detail this crucial station in Mann’s journey from arch-European conservative to liberal conservative to ardent social democrat. On the knife-edge of an exile that would last fully fourteen years, Mann declared, “Where I am, there is Germany. I carry my German culture in me.” At Princeton, Mann nourished an authentic German culture that he furiously observed was “going to the dogs” under Hitler. Here, he wrote great chunks of his brilliant novel Lotte in Weimar (The Beloved Returns); the witty novella The Transposed Heads; and the first chapters of Joseph the Provider, which contain intimations of his beloved President Roosevelt’s economic policies. Each of Mann’s university lectures—on Goethe, Freud, Wagner—attracted nearly 1,000 auditors, among them the baseball catcher, linguist, and O.S.S. spy Moe Berg. Meanwhile, Mann had the determination to travel throughout the United States, where he delivered countless speeches in defense of democratic values. In Princeton, Mann exercised his “stupendous capacity for work” in a circle of friends, all highly accomplished exiles, including Hermann Broch, Albert Einstein, and Erich Kahler. The Mind in Exile portrays this luminous constellation of intellectuals at an extraordinary time and place.

This book investigates themes of exile and oppression in Southern Africa across Bessie Head’s novels and short fiction. An exile herself, arriving in Botswana as a South African refugee, Bessie Head’s fiction serves as an important example of African exile literature. This book argues that Head’s characters are driven to exile as a result of their socio- political ambivalence while still in South Africa, and that this sense of discomfort follows them to their new lives. Investigating themes of trauma and identity politics across colonial and post- colonial contexts, this book also addresses the important theme of black- on- black prejudice and hostility which is often overlooked in studies of Head’s work. Covering Head’s shorter fiction as well as her major novels When Rain Clouds Gather (1969), Maru (1971), A Question of Power (1973), Serowe: Village of the Rain Wind (1981), and A Bewitched Crossroads: An African Saga (1984), this book will be of interest to researchers of African literature and postcolonial history.

Using original sources the author weaves a number of themes into the sad personal story of Uganda's first president in his last exile, 1966-1969. The first section, chapters 1-5, highlights the social and political causes of Sir Edward Mutesa's exile. The author argues that the failure of the state to integrate into a viable political community explains the tears Ugandans have shed since independence. Sir Edward Mutesa's exile and suffering is viewed in this historical context. The second and third sections, chapters 6-12, not only describe Sir Edward Mutesa's suffering in exile in the UK, but also bring to light an aspect of British imperial history that is rarely described in historical narratives of Africa. This is the export of the British social hierarchy into the colonies. In 1966, Sir Edward Mutesa II was guaranteed entrance into the U.K and financially supported by his friends who were, mainly, titled members of the British upper class into whose ranks he was recruited by his education, socialization and collaboration in governing the Uganda colonial state. For the British lords and sirs who managed the empire, class trumped race in their dealings with African or Asian collaborators. A substantial number of his friends from this class - Lord Allan Lennox-Boyd, Edward Heath, Lord Montague, Reginald Maudling, Lord Carrington, Sir Hugh Frazer, Lord Nugent, Sir Nigel Fisher, Sir Dingle Foot, and others - showed to Sir Edward Mutesa a degree of friendship and loyalty that was amazing. These elites considered him as one of their number and supported him against the official position of the Labour Government under Harold Wilson. Supported by his titled friends, Sir Edward Mutesa tried unsuccessfully to obtain financial support from the British Labour Government.

Writings of Exile in the English Revolution and Restoration opens a window onto exile in the years 1640-1680, as it is experienced across a broad spectrum of political and religious allegiances, and communicated through a rich variety of genres. Examining previously undiscovered and understudied as well as canonical writings, it challenges conventional paradigms which assume a neat demarcation of chronology, geography and allegiance in this seminal period of British and American history. Crossing disciplinary lines, it casts new light on how the ruptures -- and in some cases liberation -- of exile in these years both reflected and informed events in the public sphere. It also lays bare the personal, psychological and familial repercussions of exile, and their attendant literary modes, in terms of both inner, mental withdrawal and physical displacement.