51/1-2 - Qualestoria. Rivista di storia contemporanea. LI, N.ro 1-2, Dicembre 2023

Exodus has been the theme of much literature since the time of Homer and his Odyssey, not forgetting to mention Virgil's Aeneid or numerous Canti of Dante. But this history of man, marked by the exile of both individuals and entire populations, has never exactly ceased, just as their artistic and literary expressions. Precisely for this reason, the present work deals mainly with authors and works of the 20th century, which draw their material from the lives of those who endured firsthand the experience of exile, turning into literature. In this regard works of Greeks Ilias Venezis and Didò Sotiriu are quoted that tell of "the great catastrophe" of the exodus of Greeks from the coastlife of Anatolia together with Armenians when both peoples were driven from their lands by the Turks. This is followed by other authors and pieces related to a more recent exodus, that of Bosnians, Croats and Serbs fleeing from ex Yugoslavia torn apart of 1991-1995 war, then also referring to Albanian and other writers who fled from totalitarian regimes. The article closes by taking into consideration the authors and works concerning the exodus, which most closely interests Diego Zandel, particularly the exodus of the Italian population, among others, from Istria, Rijeka and Zadar due to the annexation of those territories to Marshal Tito's communist regime.