Decided to get a copy of this book after reading a report about it in the Guardian I think it was — felt sorry that the author had died so young and was curious to check it out. Turns out Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz wrote a cracking novel before his tragic end on a torpedoed passenger ship in 1942. The story basically concerns a Jewish merchant who overnight — after the infamous Kristallnacht — finds himself trying to get out of Germany. Easier said than done, even when he manages to recover some of his business wealth, albeit at a greatly knocked down rate. As he ducks and dives, "Silbermann" meets a variety of people few of whom can help him escape, and some of whom would arrest him if he had looked more obviously Jewish. It's chilling to see how a person is suddenly transformed, in Boschwitz's words, from subject to object. The protagonist is somewhat flawed but also has his good points; he is suitably complex, but all of this means nothing as he has been objectified by the Nazis: he is a Jew, and therefore an assumed public enemy. The Passenger is a brilliant novel, the only one I have read concerning this period in Germany written from the point of view of a German Jew, many of whom would die in concentration camps within a few short years of being rounded up in 1938. The book is unputdownable and includes a lot of engaging dialogue full of irony and at times anger. By the end of the story I felt deeply affected and full of admiration for the author. It's strange how this excellent and important work slipped into obscurity for so many years.