100 Books Like Liberty's Exiles

Reading Independence Lost made the American Revolution, something I’d been studying and teaching about for twenty years, feel startlingly new—and I recommend it to everyone so they can feel its magic for themselves.

It’s no wonder it won so many prizes! What’s captivating is how deftly Kathleen DuVal shifts the focus away from the familiar sites in Boston and Philadelphia to the Gulf Coast, revealing a world of Native nations, Spanish governors, free Black strivers, and Creole merchants all swept up in their own fights for independence—and all defining ‘independence’ differently. 

I love Epic Journeys of Freedom because the Australian historian Cassandra Pybus follows some of the most extraordinary lives I’ve ever encountered in history—and she tracks them to the ends of the earth.

The scope of this book is just breathtaking. Cassandra traces the odyssey of Black Americans like Harry Washington, who escaped slavery (at George Washington’s Mount Vernon), fought for their freedom, and found their way first to British Canada and eventually to Sierra Leone in West Africa.

If you want to see why historians love their jobs—how we get to be both detective and time traveler then this is the book for you.

I love Hessians because Friederike Baer takes what’s normally a footnote into the history of the American Revolution—the role of German soldiers hired by King George to fight alongside the redcoats—and puts them center stage.

The result completely upended my picture of the American Revolution, and I was dazzled by Friederike’s ability to restore depth and humanity to those so often dismissed as faceless “mercenaries.” I love how she traces their experiences—from the battlefields to the quiet, uncertain years after the war—with such care and empathy.

Reading Hessians felt like meeting the Revolution’s most feared bogeymen—and finally hearing them speak.

This is probably the most obscure book on this list, but it’s also one of the absolute best.

I knew little about the topic—the fate of Britain’s convicts during and after the American Revolution—but it grabbed me by the collar and refused to let go.

Full of empathy and precision, Emma Christopher takes us into the bowels of Britain’s penal world, and I love how she turns what could’ve been a grim topic—convict transportation, punishment, exile—into a deeply human saga of endurance, injustice, incompetence, and improvisation that ranges from Virginia to Africa to Australia. 

It’s a short book with 5 essays on displacement, loss, and ways to find a sense of belonging. The stories are personal; perhaps because of that, they touch on something that I think many of us carry in our hearts–a need to reflect on what it means to lose and rebuild a home.

The essays evoke many different themes–the power of movement and starting anew, but also a sense of alienation that even the voluntary wanderers may never lose. We carry the cultures that shaped us within us; as Eva Hoffman, one of the authors, says, “We are nothing more than the encoded memory of our heritage.” And feeling, even if a blessing, sometimes deepens our sense of alienation.

For many of the authors, it’s the language and writing that make sense of the discomfort and find a ‘home.’ It’s a small but beautifully written book and one that inspires… show more.

Even though this love story is set in very tragic times–The Spanish Civil War and the troubles in Chile–we follow the journey of two refugees, Victor and Rose, whose forced marriage gradually deepens into true love.

The author, herself an immigrant in the USA, meaningfully draws out questions facing so many migrants and refugees: Where do I belong? Where are my roots? Is my heart divided, or has it grown bigger?

If you only ever read one Palestinian memoirist, it should be Fawaz Turki.

He published three book-length memoirs, all excellent, but this is his most comprehensive autobiography and as such the must-read of all his works. It covers his early years in Haifa, his family’s displacement to Lebanon in 1948, and his subsequent adolescence in Burj al-Barajneh refugee camp; as well as his later studies and career in the US.

Exile’s Return is organized around his first return visit to Palestine in the 1990s, where he comes face-to-face with the realities of the Israeli occupation and continuing Palestinian dispossession. There are now many brilliant memoirs and autobiographies by Palestinian refugees, but Turki remains the memoirist par excellence in this genre. 

This book is almost a response to, or continuation of, Marq de Villiers’ historical account: one young man’s reflections on returning from exile to a country that had only recently rejected Apartheid.

It’s a deeply personal work in which the author grapples with his conscience as well as the wider culture in which he grew up.

Cristina Garcia has become the definitive chronicler of both Cuba and Cuban exiles. King of Cuba tells the story of two men: El Comandante (also called the despot, the tyrant, or El Líder—clearly this is Fidel) and a Miami exile, Goyo Herrera, who is as old and infirm as Castro himself. Garcia’s portrait of the desperation and ignominies these two old guys suffer, and of their hopeless attempts to cleave to past glories, transcends Cuban history and brings us two men I found cantankerous and self-inflating, but irresistible.

Being Palestinian is a collection of essays by Palestinians reflecting on their identity and experiences living outside of their homeland.

I’ve chosen it here because few works are so effective in conveying both the commonalities and the diversity of the Palestinian refugee experience. The contributors range from Ivy League professors to activists campaigning for justice in the Middle East today; they include figures who grew up in refugee camps and those raised in some of the wealthiest cities in the world.

In many ways Being Palestinian is the perfect introduction to learning more about the subject, because it is accessible and highly personal without being simplistic.