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The Author in Exile: Writing to Forget.
In an interview in 2003, David Albahari was asked how his voluntary exile affects his writing. The author objected to the term exile which according to him cannot be voluntary. He admitted however that in any displacement from the familiar "the pain of the soul is undeniable." (1) According to modern dictionaries, the term exile today is associated not only with banishment but also with voluntary abandonment of one's country and removal to a foreign country out of choice. It is in this light that the term's use in the title should be understood. When political turmoil engulfed his native Yugoslavia in the 1990s, rather than taking sides in the madness, Albahari emigrated to Calgary, Canada, where he still lives. While he left behind national turmoil and civil war, he maintained literary and intellectual ties with Belgrade, where he continued to publish his works. Since 1994 the author has written several novels--Snezni covek (A Man Made of Snow, 1995); Mamac (Bait, 1996); Mrak (Dark, 1997); Gec and Majer (Gotz and Meyer, 1998); Svetski putnik (World Traveler, 2001)--a collection of short stories Drugi jezik (Second Language, 2003), and two collections of essays Prepisivanje sveta (Rewriting the World, 1997) and Teret (Burden, 2004).
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