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The Politics of Exile. By Elizabeth Dauphinee. Routledge, 214pp, Pounds 90.00 and Pounds 19.99. ISBN 9780415640855 and 9780415640848. Published 23 January 2013.
The Politics of Exile reads like a novel, but it is an academic work that asks important questions about the research process and, specifically, researching wars such as the one that took place in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995, where crimes and atrocities were committed. The book does so by taking an unusual approach for a scholarly work: storytelling. It interweaves the narrative of an unnamed protagonist - a professor of international politics in Canada - with stories of a handful of men and women caught up in the Bosnian war and, later, their exile in Toronto.
Part of the publisher's Interventions series - dedicated to critical exploration of international relations - this book speaks to major themes in international relations and ethics, and yet does so without footnotes, convoluted theories or references to scholarly work. Indeed, just about the only time any scholarly names appear are in a scene in which the narrator shreds their books in her office.
The story begins one summer when...