Jennifer Steil Announces Third Novel, Exile Music

Jennifer Steil Announces Third Novel, Exile Music

Monday, May 11, 2020

KHN Alum (2017) and writer, Jennifer Steil, has announced the publication of her third book, Exile Music, which was released via Viking USA on May 5, 2020. Jennifer's new novel follows the lives of a family of Austrian Jewish musicians who seek refuge from the Nazis in Bolivia in 1938. Based on an unexplored slice of World War II history, the novel is the captivating story of a young Jewish girl whose family flees refined and urbane Vienna for safe harbor in the mountains of Bolivia. Exile Music is Jennifer's third book, which she worked on while she was here at KHN as a resident.

Jennifer Steil is an award-winning author and journalist who lives in many countries (currently Uzbekistan).  A bisexual writer who has lived in Arabia and South America for nearly a decade, she is interested in transcultural issues, freedom of expression, and human rights.

Her most recent novel prior to Exile MusicThe Ambassador’s Wife, was published by Doubleday in 2015, won the 2013 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition Best Novel award and the 2016 Phillip McMath Post Publication Book Award. The novel, which explores white savior complex, freedom of expression, art, terrorism, and parenthood, was shortlisted for both the Bisexual Book Award and the Lascaux Novel Award, and has received considerable critical acclaim, notably in the Seattle Times, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and The New York Times Book Review. It has been published in several other languages, including Italian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Polish. The Mark Gordon Company optioned the film rights to The Ambassador’s Wife, with plans to create a television miniseries starring Oscar-winner Anne Hathaway. Jennifer’s first book, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky (Broadway Books, 2010), a memoir about her tenure as editor of the Yemen Observer newspaper in Sana’a, received praise from The New York Times, Newsweek, and the Sydney Morning Herald. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune chose it as one of their best travel books of the year in 2010, and Elle magazine awarded it their Readers’ Prize. National Geographic Traveler included the book in their 2014 recommended reading list. It has been published in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Turkey, and Poland.

Jennifer's new novel, as well as her other books, can be ordered at these locations (see links below), and the author also encourages you to contact your local bookseller/small-business bookseller.

Congratulations, Jennifer!