The peregrinations of a Jew trying to escape Hitler's Germany.
Otto Silbermann is a successful Jewish businessman who has left it a little too late to leave Nazi Germany. He is trying to sell his business and home without being too badly ripped off by the Aryan purchasers. But when stormtroopers break down his front door he escapes out of the back to become a fugitive in his own country. He criss-crosses the country on trains, not knowing what to do next, repeatedly changing his mind, doggedly hanging on to his good manners and what is left of his fortune. He is indecisive and bewildered: a typical Kafkaesque hero caught in the arbitrary snares of a monstrous society. It is also written in a Kafkaesque style: straightforwardly describing what is said and done by the characters, with no attempt to analyse behaviours.
This is a book about hopelessness and how it saps the will. It is a book about the difficulty of evolving one's understanding of the world when one's environment changes, and how those who don't evolve are likely to become extinct.
Selected quotes:
- "He was struck by the man's sunken face and drooping shoulders. Undoubtedly a miner, he thought. They age quickly. Those people don't get much out of life, although they go through a great deal - they probably don't even realise how much. ... They don't have any youth, these people. The struggle starts when they're fourteen years old and from then on it's a fight for sheer survival, with everything at stake." (Ch 5)
- "I have already emigrated ... I am no longer in Germany. I am in trains that run through Germany. That's a big difference." (Ch 5)
- "One can travel to escape calm. But one can also travel to find calm." (Ch 5)
A masterpiece of nihilism.
December 2024; 255 pages
First published in German as Der Reisende in 2018
English translation by Philip Boehm published by Pushkin press in 2021.
No comments:
Post a Comment