About the Author:

Elliot will sign Exiles at:

Barrington Books
184 County Rd.
Saturday, Sept. 12 - 1 pm.

Symposium Books
240 Westminster St., Providence
Thursday, Sept. 24 – Noon

Books on the Square
471 Angell St., Providence
Friday, Oct. 16 – 7 p.m.

Here’s the conclusion to the Providence Journal review, by Sam Coale:

This is a great, gripping book, elegantly styled and provocative with its troubling underplots and psychological fathomings. People die, identities shift and change, the military police and shadowy creatures lurk on the sidelines, lust battles love. And through it all Krieger manages to explore the loneliness and isolation of exiles everywhere, the uprooting and the homesickness, and the burden of solitariness that no matter what happens, none can shake.

And here’s a link to the full review:
http://www.projo.com/books/content/BOOK-EXILES_08-09-09_4TF47EO_v11.19c8474.html

Here’s the conclusion of the review, by Harvey Havel:

Krieger’s tale, while also dealing with the idea of trying to find one’s identity in turbulent political times, is a also sad tale that marks the slow, inevitable drift from innocence to sophistication - but a sophistication that turns these anti-war protesters into the very people they had originally resisted against in the first place. The book is prescient and wise in this regard - and no less riveting in how it goes about presenting its story. It leaves Krieger’s readers with a sense of loss but also with the sense that they are more knowledgeable than when they first started reading the book. Krieger’s work shows how there is always a heavy price to pay for trying to find and inhabit the places where we think we are truly free from the forces that chain us.

Here’s the url for the full review:

http://www.examiner.com/x-15514-Albany-Literature-Examiner~y2009m8d9-American-antiwar-expats-in-Sweden-in-the-1970s-as-portrayed-in-Elliot-Kriegers-new-novel-Exiles

Exiles is now on display in the window of City Lights Bookstore, in San Francisco.
If anyone reading this blog spots a copy of Exiles in any bookstore window, please send me the a picture (krieger.exiles@gmail.com) and I’ll post it here (and on my FB page) with a shoutout to the store!
This picture, courtesy of Brady McCartney.

Exiles, by Elliot Krieger @ City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco

Exiles Elliot Krieger. Soho, $24 (352p) ISBN 978-1-56947-589-8

O. Henry prize–winner Krieger follows in his compelling debut an American college student and Vietnam War dissenter who absconds to Sweden for asylum. Arriving in war-neutral Uppsala, Lenny Spiegel is welcomed into the American Resisters Movement, a group of spirited draft dodgers, AWOL soldiers and antiviolence protesters led by dynamic U.S. Army defector Aaronson, who looks so much like Spiegel that Spiegel was picked up in the states for a crime Aaronson committed. Now, reunited in northern Europe, Spiegel gets deeper into trouble after loaning Aaronson his passport to assist other defectors through Denmark. Stuck in Uppsala with no identification, Spiegel panics when he learns that Aaronson had other plans all along and is now in West Germany with no plans to return. Suspicions mount, friends emerge as duplicitous allies, and Spiegel yearns to return home to America while accusations of espionage and abdication surface against the exile leader. The plot is jumpy at the onset, but once Krieger kicks the narrative into high gear, a remarkable character study emerges of Spiegel and his quest for identity and deliverance. (Aug.)

I’d often imagined (hoped? fantasized?) that John Updike, one of my truly favorite authors, would someday read Exiles and enjoy the book. I’m saddened to know that this will never be. He was a terrific writer in so many genres, and, as the many tributes to him have noted, he was a thoughtful and generous man with a playful conversational wit. I was privileged to have met him once; when I was the books editor at the Providence Journal, we were seated next to each other at a formal dinner at RISD. We had a great discussion; I’d recorded some of it for a feature story, but I can’t find the tape.

My wife, Marge, will kill me for telling this story, but when I completed a first draft of Exiles, she read it straight through. When she finished, she told me what she loved about the book. But then she told me something else: “Too much sex,” she said. “Too much like Updike.” I told her that if Exiles was ever to be published, I’d love to use that line on the front cover! (Alas, it is, but I didn’t.) - elliot

krieger.exiles@gmail.com

One curious thing about Exiles is the use of Swedish. I learned some of the language when I was a student in Sweden, in a state-sponsored language school very much like the one I describe in the book. Of course I’ve forgotten most of what I learned (I guess I didn’t really “learn” it, you might say). But I knew that, over the course of my life, when people learned that I’d lived in Sweden, they’d ask to to “say something in Swedish.” So I determined that I’d learn at least one totally Swedish-sounding sentence and never forget it.

I found the perfect sentence in one of my language-instruction books, and it’s this: “Da ringer jåg på torsdag kväll.” Transliterated, it sounds a little like: “Dah rrrring-air yawg paw toorsh-dahg kvell.” That still doesn’t give you a sense of the accents. You really have to hear me (or, better, a Swede!) say it. It means: I’ll call you up on Thursday night. I use the sentence in the first chapter of the book. I couldn’t resist.

- elliot
krieger.exiles@gmail.com

I’m a novice: new Soho author, debut novelist, first-time blogger, so bear with me. It’s taken a long time for Exiles to find a home. I wrote Exiles about ten years ago. Many agents and many publishers passed, and I put it aside for some time, but I had faith in the story and I was really pleased that Laura Hruska, the august editor and publisher of the Soho Press, accepted Exiles from among her unsolicited manuscripts. Soho will publish the novel in August.
Exiles is set in Sweden, in 1970, during the Vietnam era. It tells the story of an American student (Lenny Spiegel) who goes to Uppsala to help the American deserters and resisters. Spiegel loans his passport to Aaronson, one of the resisters, who takes off on a mission to the continent. When Aaronson fails to return, Spiegel finds that he’s become a key player in a dangerous game.
Though Exiles is definitely a work of fiction and by no means a memoir, I did live in Sweden in the 70s, as an exchange student. Many of the people and places, and some of the events, in Exiles are based on my observations and memories. Anyone who lived there during that period knows that it was a strange and exciting time, and I have tried to capture and convey the sense of what it was like to live through those difficult days.
I hope that you’ll get a chance to read Exiles, and that you’ll enjoy it. I’d be glad to hear from anyone who has thoughts or questions about the book. Feel free to write to me at: krieger.exiles@gmail.com

Soho Press will publish my first novel, Exiles, in August 2009. I’m honored to be a new Soho author, and I will check in on the Soho Press Blog from time to time. If you have questions or comments about Exiles, feel free to write to me at: krieger.exiles@gmail.com