ALTOGETHER ELSEWHERE: Writers on Exile

The 20th century didn't invent exile, but it certainly visited that state on more people than ever before, so the time seems ripe for a collection of various writers' thoughts on both political banishment and voluntary expatriation. Robinson (The Other American Drama, not reviewed) organizes his anthology into six sections, beginning with ""Definitions"" (Joseph Brodsky suggests that all exiles, from Gastarbeiters to political refugees, are ""running away from the worse toward the better"") and ending with ""Returns and New Departures,"" in which Ruth Prawer Jhabvala writes about ""becoming European again"" after years of living in India. Selections by Petrarch, Seneca, and Mme. de Staë1 provide historical perspective, but the emphasis is on exiles of the past 100 years, from Thomas Mann, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Harry Crosby to Czeslaw Milosz, Eva Hoffman, and Vassily Aksyonov.