SOURCE: "Brian Moore and the Meaning of Exile," in Medieval and Modern Ireland, edited by Richard Wall, Colin Smythe, 1988, pp. 91-107.

Dahlie is a Canadian critic and educator who has written extensively on Moore's works. In the following essay, originally presented at the International Conference of the Canadian Association for Irish Studies in February 1985 and subsequently revised, he discusses Moore's portrayal of exile in several of his novels, short stories, and essays.

Almost two thousand years ago, one of the earliest writers sent into exile complained that he was compelled 'to dwell at the edge of the world, a land far removed from [his] own', a place where he had 'no interchange of speech … with the wild people [and was] understood by nobody' [Ovid, Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto, translated by Arthur Leslie Wheeler, 1924]. Just over a decade and a half ago, another writer forced into exile, upon...