Return of the Exiled

by Max Buchdahl, Aubrey Baird (Cover Artist)

In Return of the Exiled, Max Buchdahl details the passage of his family throughout Germany in the years prior to their immigration to the United States. Return of the Exiled parallels the past, as Max’s family attempts to get out of Nazi Germany, with the present, as Max travels with his family to Germany to re-trace his ancestor’s steps. Through careful thought and observation, Return of the Exiled takes the reader into the mind of a 17 year-old as he reflects upon his family’s past before he embarks on his own future.

"In gathering up the damaged threads of his family’s gripping emergence from Hitler’s Germany, teen author Max Buchdahl has woven an unforgettable narrative of what it’s like to stare into the abyss and to return more alive for it. Part family memoir and part modern reckoning, 'Return of the Exiled' goes well beyond the holocaust accounts that remind us to never forget. With this searing opus, Buchdahl pays a debt to those who have made his life possible, while also urging his unborn heirs to live, live and live."

-Ramsey Flynn, author of "Cry From the Deep"

"Via a narrative that gracefully, sometimes exhaustively, spins between Nazi-era history, a family's grim-but-ennobling tale, and a young man's quest for his community's past, 'Return of the Exiled' takes the reader on a compelling journey. Max Buchdahl's voice is earnest and genuine, his observations sharp and true."
-Michael Anft, journalist and critic

243 pages, Paperback

First published April 25, 2014

About the author

MAX BUCHDAHL is a recent high school graduate, an avid sports fan, and an aspiring journalist. After attending a Jewish day school through eighth grade, Max followed his love of writing to the George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology in Towson, Maryland. Through the acclaimed Literary Arts program there, he became Editor-in-Chief of the widely-read school newspaper. He will continue his education at Temple University as a Journalism major.

Reviews

[Elliot Ratzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first week of the author’s freshman year at Temple U. we met and he told me about writing this book. It was Fall ‘14, and by the end of the week I dutifully ordered it. So it’s almost nine years later and it’s a few days before Max’s wedding to another one of my students, and I finally got around to reading it. It is a remarkable achievement: the author has a compelling and calm voice as he describes some of the histories, travails, near-misses, and relationships of his grand and great-grandparents, told through the lens of his own family trip to Germany. Max describes early on his influence by “In Cold Blood” and parts are scenes from family history reconstructed in that “non-fiction novel” style. What might have been a banal filial chore of family documentation, like watching someone else’s home movies, turns out to be a fine testimony that anyone would profit from reading. I learned a bunch of details about German-Jewish life, and the Holocaust, that I didn’t know—a gift. Kudos!