Exile – The Heart of the Secret World

The introduction situates the book in its different frames of reference, and historical and theoretical contexts to show how exile is a persistent political and narrative concern in spy fiction and extends to other current interest in citizenship and belonging. This includes experiential and philosophical definitions of exile and their relation to the genre of spy thriller, twentieth century political crises, and propaganda in relation to political art. It reviews various scholarly studies of spy fiction to show how fictional representations of espionage as tied to states of exile demonstrates historical, narrative, and analytical complexity. The introduction then outlines each of the following chapters and how they relate thematically to each other.