| This dissertation examines the way exiled writers define success in the imaginative spaces of their novels. Through readings of the literary works of Vladimir Nabokov, Salman Rushdie, and Milan Kundera, the dissertation argues that exilic writers are successful when they translate themselves and adapt to a new world by coming to terms with the past or by reconciling it with their present in the realm of the imaginary, thereby finding a perfect balance within. These writers become liberated, literary amphibians who know how to reconcile their past with the immediate present without losing a sense of their origins, who know how to reinvent themselves in the new territory and live with the ever-present ambivalence of life and shadows from the past.; This liberation and transcendence of exile manifests itself markedly in the stories of their characters. Most significantly, through liberation and reinvention in the new world, their characters realize the value of freedoms of expression and imagination. In Nabokov's Pnin, The Gift, Invitation to a Beheading, the main characters (Pnin, Fedor, Cincinnatus) know the value of freedom of expression and imagination, and find liberty by being true to their beliefs, and escaping into the imaginative worlds they create. In Rushdie's Moor's Last Sigh and Fury, his main protagonists (Moor, Professor Solanka) promulgate freedom of expression and choice, raising fundamental questions about whether various cultures and religions can express tolerance towards each other, and whether it is possible to extinguish the anger one internalizes because of all of the damage life has done to them. In Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Laughter of Being, The Joke, characters attempt to survive in the world that denies them essential rights and liberties such as freedom to remember, freedom to express oneself, and freedom to choose. |
