In this essay I engage with two writers whose work includes elements of both internationalism and cosmopolitanism. Generations apart they connect with the idea of the national from positions of exile igniting a very contemporary and historical debate on the position of faith and the location of culture in the modern postcolonial nation. I argue that exile in the case of the Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz is informed by an internationalism tied to national sovereignty, whereas the British Pakistani novelist Nadeem Aslam responding to a post 9/11 world turns to a utopian model of cosmopolitanism, looking for the universal theme of love to repair a dysfunctional society
