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I began to love my own country now that I was forbidden to enter it. -Carlos Romero Estevez

For Carlos Romero Estevez, freedom from danger means a life in exile. Rescued from his home in a Latin American military dictatorship - where his writings have been banned and he is wanted by the state - the poet and journalist is brought to a new home in Vancouver. His rescuers, a group devoted to helping oppressed writers, think they've found a hero, a posterboy. Carlos thinks he's found a new life, new freedom, and new, powerful friends.

But soon everyone's illusions are dispelled, and Carlos finds life in exile to be a new kind of prison. His arranged job as a writer-in-residence at the university fails to produce the expected best-selling memoir. And Carlos begins to realise that his powerful new friends are simply unable to give him the kind of life he knew before his imprisonment, when he associated with the elite writers of his nation - as well as notorious revolutionaries.

In prose that is at once delicate and passionate, Ann Ireland's Exile is the work of an author in full control of her considerable talents. "(Ireland's) characters are delightfully stereotypical, and she playfully puts people's prejudices and assumptions on display."