The Exile
by William Kotzwinkle
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In this "psychological mind bender," a Kafkaesque crisis of identity transports a famous actor from 1980s Hollywood to Nazi Germany (The Washington Post).At forty-five, Hollywood film star David Caspian should be basking in his success. Instead, his career is souring as he stresses over the next generation of actors eager to replace him. Losing himself in waking fantasies, David slips through a crack in time, awakening in the back alleys of Hitler's Berlin. He is no longer David Caspian. He show more has become Felix, a ruthless black marketeer.
With the Gestapo closing in on him, David races against time—and space—as he fights to take control of Felix before Felix takes control of him. Witty, macabre, and utterly thrilling, The Exile is a mesmerizing novel that will leave readers wondering where reality ends and fiction begins.
People wrote that when William Kotzwinkle "is the author, readers can be sure only that the book in question will be different from everything else." But even among the award-winning author's work, this bracing satire stands out for the sweep of its vision, full of "comedy, despair, horror and technical storytelling delight" (The New York Times Book Review).
"The book becomes glued to the reader's hands as the devastating climactic scenes pile one on another. . . . Powerful writing." —The Washington Post Book World
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absurdeist Both novels are about Los Angeles exiles operating in plausible alternate histories about Hitler and the Nazis.
Member Reviews
David Caspian is an accomplished Hollywood actor who increasing finds himself traveling between dimensions to become Felix, a German black marketer in Berlin during WWII.
Kotzwinkle skillfully toggles between Nazi Germany near the end of the war and Los Angeles in the 1980s as he takes Caspian on trips of either time travel or madness.
The Exile is a fantastic, inventive, and apparently overlooked novel in Kotzwinkle’s brilliant oeuvre.
Kotzwinkle skillfully toggles between Nazi Germany near the end of the war and Los Angeles in the 1980s as he takes Caspian on trips of either time travel or madness.
The Exile is a fantastic, inventive, and apparently overlooked novel in Kotzwinkle’s brilliant oeuvre.
Kotzwinkle has his moments, and this story concludes with a great twist, but generally the whole thing felt thin...he said vaguely...
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Author Information
83+ Works 8,116 Members
William Kotzwinkle was born in 1938 in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He attended Rider College and Pennsylvania State University.He worked as an editor and writer in the 1960s. William Kotzwinkle is an accomplished author who is best known for his book of the film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, but who has produced a range of work for both adults and show more children that often transgresses genre boundaries and the distinction between serious and popular fiction. Beginning as a children's writer with The Fireman, he then published novels for adults such as Hermes 3000, The Fan Man, and Queen of Swords, which began to establish him as an original and distinctive novelist. But it was Doctor Rat that made his reputation as a powerful fantasy writer with a sharp satirical edge. The novel focuses upon laboratory rats whose spokesman, the Doctor Rat of the title, eventually escapes from the vast laboratory where experiments on his fellow-creatures are taking place, and whose adventures are interwoven with shorter tales told by animals of different kinds who finally try to form a whole that will make humans more peaceful and benign. But they are all killed. William Kotzwinkle is a novelist and poet, who is known for his broad range of style and subject. He is a two-time recipient of the National Magazine Award for Fiction, a National Book Critics Circle Award nominee. He lives with his wife, author Elizabeth Gundy, in Maine. He has won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel for Doctor Rat in 1977. He published The Million Dollar Bear in 1994. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
rororo (13640)
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Filmriss
- Original title
- The Exile
- Original publication date
- 1987
- First words*
- "Das waren Zeiten, und ich war dabei."
- Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Ja, sicher, wir müssen es auf jeden Fall versuchen.
- Original language*
- Amerikanisch
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Science Fiction, Suspense & Thriller, Fantasy, Historical Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 813.54 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999
- LCC
- PS3561 .O85 .E9 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 1961-
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 96
- Popularity
- 335,189
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.85)
- Languages
- English, French, German
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 13
- ASINs
- 1
