Letters of Transit

Haunting reflections on exile and memory from five award-winning authors. All of the award-winning writers in Letters of Transit have written powerfully on exile, home, and memory, using the written word as a tool for revisiting their old homes or fashioning new ones. Now, in five newly commissioned original essays, they offer moving distillations of all of their most important thinking on these themes. Andr Aciman traces his migration from his home in Egypt to Italy and the United States and compares his own transience with the unrootedness of many moderns. Eva Hoffman examines the crucial role of language and what happens when your first is lost. Returning to the political themes of his earlier work, Edward Said defends his conflicting political and cultural allegiances. Novelist Bharati Mukherjee explores her own struggle with assimilation. Finally, Charles Simic remembers the comedy of bureaucracy he experienced as a sixteen-year-old "displaced person" in Paris after the war, and his thwarted attempts at "fitting in" in America. Letters of Transit is a wonderful introduction to the works of these extraordinary writers.