Throughout human history, involuntary exile was often a common punishment—a means of getting rid of troublesome citizens. The Italian Casanova was forced into exile after being charged with indecency. Napoleon Bonaparte spent the last years of his life on a tiny island in the Atlantic, Saint Helena, far from France. Many artists and intellectuals who feared for their lives, like Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein, fled Nazi Germany. For this same reason, the Dalai Lama has lived for decades in exile from Tibet, now under the control of communist China.
Among these exiles were writers whose work offended the ruling power.
