The Iranian graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi wrote the book Persepolis to document her flight from Tehran. The Afghan novelist Khaled Hosseini wrote the book the Kite Runner to tell the story of the fall of Kabul through the eyes of a young boy. Perhaps the greatest Catalan writer of all time, Mercè Rodoreda, fled Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War and spent the rest of her life in exile in France and Switzerland. 

 

This is a story that goes on and on, over time and around the globe. 

 

Ovid, one of three canonical poets of the Roman Empire, was exiled by Emperor Augustus to the Black Sea for the rest of his life. Salka Viertel fled the Nazis and ended up with a career writing for Greta Garbo and Ida Lupino in Hollywood. 

 

These are voices of a planet in disarray. Though different, they share the experience of being writers who fled their home countries and then sought ways to continue telling stories to the rest of the world. 

 

This is in fact what Salman Rushdie wanted to talk about the day he was stabbed on stage : the experience of being a writer in forced exile. 

 

The CERDAN STORIES podcast will introduce you to exiled writers and talk with them about their craft, their language, and the particular ways they adapt, or don’t, to new and very unfamiliar places. We strive to tell the stories our guests want to tell, often circling around ideas of home and identity, what is lost and what is gained.