The project deals with the exile writings of two German authors who were in Latin America during the 1930s and 40s (Paul Zech in Argentina and Anna Seghers in Mexico) and two Chilean authors who fled to Germany to escape the Pinochet regime during the 1970s and 80s (Antonio Skármeta to the FRG and Omar Saavedra Santis to the GDR). The dissertation sheds a critical light on the idealization of the exile author figure within the academic community as a problematic practice that often results in the negative reception of both the exiles' expressions of nostalgia and their criticisms of the host country. This dissertation further examines the way the authors attempt to maintain or regain agency in the arena of sociopolitical criticism by exploring how the writers' experiences with a host culture served to shape thematic and aesthetic elements in their own socio-critical works.

The thesis not only undertakes close readings of the exiled authors' texts but, crucially, places them within the historical context of both the home and host countries. In pursuing these two complementary aims, the project locates thematic and stylistic continuities with, and dramatic departures from, the writers' pre-exile works that are only discernible through familiarity with the specific literary and political traditions of both cultures. Finally, through comparison of the authors' oeuvres, the dissertation makes pertinent observations about the commonalities and particularities of the exile experience per se that often go unnoticed in studies focused on the political, social, and aesthetic background of one culture alone.