Out of Exile

The Sudanese Civil War and the Darfur conflict have been responsible for the deaths of over 2 million Sudanese civilians and have strewn millions upon millions more across the face of the earth. Many refugees seek asylum through Cairo, Egypt, where there is a shadow world of human suffering, greed, and death.

Out of Exile is a series of interviews with refugees and former captives who escaped the Sudan. Some were accepted as asylum seekers in places like the United States, Australia, and Brazil, while others have been trapped as stateless refugees in places like Cairo. Others are classified as 'internally displaced' persons, and are living in massive refugee camps within the Sudan and neighboring countries.

While certainly everyone at this point knows, at a minimum, that there is a place called Darfur and in that place people are suffering and dying, books like Out of Exile contextualize and bring home the horror of the situation in ways that CNN (beloved though they may be) could never accomplish.

The interviews were edited and compiled by Craig Walzer, and you can buy the book at McSweeney's for $12. John Freeman has written an excellent review for the San Francisco Chronicle.