The Exile Kiss

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Exile Kiss
Cover of First Orb Edition (Tor Books, 2006)
Author	George Alec Effinger
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Marîd Audran series
Genre(s)	Science fiction (cyberpunk) novel
Publisher	Doubleday
Publication date	April 1991
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-385-41423-4
Preceded by	A Fire in the Sun, (1989)

Cover of the 1991 Doubleday Books paperback edition with cover art by Stephen & Paul Youll.

The Exile Kiss is a cyberpunk science fiction novel by George Alec Effinger published in 1991.^[1] It is the third novel in the three-book Marîd Audran series, following the events of A Fire in the Sun.

The title of the novel comes from The Tragedy of Coriolanus, a play by William Shakespeare: "O! a kiss / Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge!"

[edit] Plot introduction

Married to Indihar, though from his perspective in name only, Marîd Audran gets invited to a reception at the palace of the amir of the city. Shaykh Mahali, the amir, wishes thusly to end the rivalry between Friedlander Bey and Reda Abu Adil, two of the most powerful men in the city. Both Marîd and Friedlander Bey, or 'Papa' as he's known in the Budayeen, get suspicious when their sworn enemy Reda Abu Adil designates Marîd as an officer of the Jaish, an unofficial right-wing outfit working for Shaykh Reda.

However, it isn't until after the party that Abu Adil's scheme unfolds: Marîd and Papa are put under arrest by Lieutenant Hajjar and charged with the murder of a police officer named Khalid Maxwell. They're sentenced on-the-spot into exile, never to return to the city under pain of execution. Left to die amongst the burning sands of a vast desert, their luck finally turns as they're rescued by a nomad tribe of Bani Salim, allowing them to start planning the vengeance they'd exact upon the treacherous Shaykh Reda Abu Adil and prove their innocence — if they ever make it back to the city alive.