Exiles
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Young Americans flee to Sweden to escape the Vietnam War, but find there is danger there too, in this novel “filled with suspense” (Ann Beattie).
Sweden has granted asylum to American protesters against the Vietnam War. Some are draft resisters; some are wanted by the FBI for acts of violence; some are AWOL soldiers; and some are actually working for the CIA—or so everyone suspects.
They are eking out their lives in Uppsala on a meager dole. Each thinks he would be a better group spokesperson than Aronson, who is the current leader of the Americans in exile and a wanted man in the United States. Into this maelstrom of conflicting egos comes an innocent, Lenny Spiegel, who has volunteered to travel to Sweden to help. When Aronson notices the physical resemblance between them, he “borrows” Lenny’s passport. Until it is returned, Lenny is stuck in Uppsala—where many believe he is Aronson, and where Lenny begins to suspect that no good deed goes unpunished.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.