What is the theme in The Country Without a Post Office by Agha Shahid Ali?

Exile is a main theme in the book. The twentieth century was a century of wars, when old countries dissolved and new ones sprang up. As a result, cultural and national identity was often in flux, products of shifts in population and changing borders. The image of exile permeates much twentieth-century poetry and is a primary motif in Ali's poem. To be lost is to be in exile, not only from one's country but from oneself as well.