Leo Strauss, “Natural Right and History” (1953)

Country of origin: Germany

Reasons for leaving: Already teaching in England when the Nazis came to power, Strauss was prevented from returning and moved to the United States in 1937.

In six lectures given from his perch at the University of Chicago, Strauss laid out his argument about what he saw as modernity’s nihilistic rejection of classical philosophy. The immutable truths of Plato and Aristotle needed to be appreciated again. Once we follow the thought of these ancient philosophers we will see more clearly what should distinguish right and wrong in ethics and politics.

Vladimir Nabokov, “Lolita” (1955)

Country of origin: Russia

Reasons for leaving: Born to Russian nobility, Nabokov and his family fled the Bolshevik Revolution, living in a succession of European countries. He eventually moved to America in 1940, where he took up work as an entomologist at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, among other jobs.

In his most famous and controversial novel, Nabokov took up the story of Humbert Humbert, a man obsessed with a young girl, his nymphet, Lolita. In what is essentially the tale of a sordid road trip, Nabokov has Humbert traveling the country in possession of his illicit love interest. The book is filled with Nabokov’s own observations about an America that still felt foreign and exciting to him.

Isabel Allende, “The House of the Spirits” (1982)

Country of origin: Chile

Reasons for leaving: Allende fled to Venezuela in 1973 after the coup that brought down Salvador Allende, the socialist leader and her father’s cousin. She moved to California in the late 1980s.

Drawing on the circumstances of her own exile, Allende used her debut novel to tell a multigenerational saga that takes place in an unnamed country very much like Chile. We see the destruction of democracy and the rise of a cruel dictator who tries to eliminate all opposition. “I wanted to show that life goes in a circle, events are intertwined, and that history repeats itself, there is no beginning and no end,” Allende said about her sprawling, magic-realist narrative.