Erich Fried fled Austria when the Nazis invaded in 1938 and destroyed his family, and went on to become their most famous living poet while residing in North London. Fried now returns to the Vienna of his childhood and visits East and West Berlin, while Observer correspondent Neal Ascherson assesses the relevance of his poetry to what Fried sees as the never-ending battle against the re-emergence of fascism.

Josef Skvorecky has lived through Nazi occupation, Stalinist clampdown, and the Prague Spring before his exile in 1968. The acclaimed novelist remembers his extraordinary chequered past and returns to one of his first loves: the bass saxophone.

Miriam Makeba was exiled from South Africa nearly 30 years ago for supporting the anti-apartheid movement. But the internationally renowned singer holds a deep conviction that one day she will return to live in a de-segregated South Africa.

Edward Said, one of America's most distinguished literary scholars and critics, puts his argument for a just settlement to the Palestinian question - his homeland and his dispossessed people.

Faced with arrest along with other filmmakers following the 1973 military coup that ended Salvador Allende's Marxist government in Chile, Raoul Ruiz fled. He settled in Paris and embraces his exile, but his strange and beautiful films suggest he is a joker of the most serious kind.