Of exile and artists

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to record and define the relationship between the ‘artist’ and the theme of ‘exile’ which constantly fascinated the literary writers and critics across the globe over the years. As creative artists and critics many of the twentieth and twenty-first century novelists - to name a few, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, V.S. Naipaul, Jean Rhys, Jhumpa Lahiri and so on. - have been preoccupied with the idea of ‘exile’ and alienation of ‘self’ which places them in the category of post-colonial diaspora writers. Examining the emotional intensity of an exiled individual most of these literary writers of the era have themselves been either nomads or globe-trotters connecting themselves to the vital nerve-center of contemporary mainstream life. The tragic sense of uprootedness of an individual’s existence who is everywhere and still ‘nowhere’ on this globe gathers substance from the alienated self that is theirs sometimes crying, other times searching for a true or real home in their writings.