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whats_margaret_reading's review against another edition
4.0
The nameless narrator of Anna Seghers' Transit is on the run having escaped a work camp. He is trying to escape the war in Europe by emigrating, and the novel tells the story of mistaken identity, bureaucratic frustrations, and the multifaceted landscape of Marseilles at the beginning of the Second World War.
Weidel, who our narrator is on his way to deliver a letter to, dies with coveted transit documents in a suitcase containing the manuscript of his last work. Weidel's estranged, ex-wife is in Marseilles and our narrator decides to travel there, maybe to deliver the papers and passes but maybe also to use them to get himself out of France. He is on the run, after all having escaped a German work camp.
With wine, pizza, and the familiarity of a cafe, Seghers' narrator takes the reader along with him in the seedier, less romantic version of "Casablanca". The first time Transit has appeared in English, not only does the publication make available a unique work by an author who lived through the Second World War and in East Germany afterwords, it is also a complex work about desperation and almost unending waiting.
Weidel, who our narrator is on his way to deliver a letter to, dies with coveted transit documents in a suitcase containing the manuscript of his last work. Weidel's estranged, ex-wife is in Marseilles and our narrator decides to travel there, maybe to deliver the papers and passes but maybe also to use them to get himself out of France. He is on the run, after all having escaped a German work camp.
With wine, pizza, and the familiarity of a cafe, Seghers' narrator takes the reader along with him in the seedier, less romantic version of "Casablanca". The first time Transit has appeared in English, not only does the publication make available a unique work by an author who lived through the Second World War and in East Germany afterwords, it is also a complex work about desperation and almost unending waiting.
plena's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
fil's review against another edition
4.0
Ending up in Marseille after escaping from a work camp and trying to keep ahead of the Nazis, this nameless protagonist decides to don the cloak of Proteus and ends up creating havoc (well – yes and no) in an almost surreal setting.
In a perfect bureaucratic nightmare, refugees wanting to leave the city need to acquire an insane number of visas and are granted stay while those who want to stay must provide proof they want to leave, slightly reminiscent of Kafka’s ‘[b:The Trial|17690|The Trial|Franz Kafka|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320399438s/17690.jpg|2965832]’ version of government but this one is actually well written. In the meantime our unnamed refugee has to cope with boredom and uncertainty but has an eclectic cast of characters helping him out in both aspects. All this under Nazi and Vichy threat, oof!
In a perfect bureaucratic nightmare, refugees wanting to leave the city need to acquire an insane number of visas and are granted stay while those who want to stay must provide proof they want to leave, slightly reminiscent of Kafka’s ‘[b:The Trial|17690|The Trial|Franz Kafka|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320399438s/17690.jpg|2965832]’ version of government but this one is actually well written. In the meantime our unnamed refugee has to cope with boredom and uncertainty but has an eclectic cast of characters helping him out in both aspects. All this under Nazi and Vichy threat, oof!
msand3's review against another edition
3.0
"For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live." - Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia
In the past two years, the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe (and now across the world) has been the most widespread since World War II. It has challenged the ability of free nations to balance compassion with security and has changed the political climate to the extent that xenophobia and populist dissent are now threatening to overrun the free world. In reading the fiction of the mid-twentieth century, we find that these issues are nothing new. Indeed, in this fiction we can learn important lessons and gain new perspectives on the challenges that continue to face us today.
Anna Seghers' novel draws on her own experiences as a refugee from Germany in the 30s, when simply existing as a person was a crime and crossing borders for freedom (and basic survival) was a Herculean task that could lead to capture, murder, or suicide. Transit is narrated by a man who has escaped a Nazi concentration camp and is seeking simply to live a life of peace in France. He soon discovers that this is impossible, as he becomes part of a group of refugees trying to escape France before the arrival of the German army.
The resulting bureaucratic nightmare requires refugees to have an endless amount of papers and visas, which are nearly impossible to attain. One must have a resident visa merely to temporary reside in France, and only on the condition that one is looking to leave. In order to leave, one must have a visa to enter the country of refuge. However, one cannot simply travel to that country without first stopped at other countries in-between, either by land, air, or sea. Therefore, one also needs transit visas for each stop in-between. By the time a person can obtain the proper entry visas, their transit visas become out-of-date, and vice versa. Since it takes so long to obtain these visas, one risks out-staying a resident visa, for which one must continually re-apply, but which are perhaps the most difficult to obtain.
It is a Kafkaesque nightmare that leads the narrator to adopt the persona of a fellow refugee --a writer who has recently committed suicide (possibly a reference to Seghers' acquaintance Walter Benjamin?). As the narrator goes in circles trying to either stay in France or obtain the proper visas to flee to Mexico, he runs into the girlfriend of the deceased writer, who is currently searching for her lover, whom she doesn't realize is dead.
Lost in all this paperwork is the humanity of the refugees, who are shuffled around like so many cattle, often rounded up for little or no reason and sent back to concentration camps. Our narrator gives us an idea of the constant fear and despair felt by these men and women who discover that their only crimes are being alive and trying to cross borders to survive. The novel is written as a narrative told by the unnamed narrator at a cafe, which suggests that he is not only adopting the persona of a writer, but has also become a storyteller himself, spinning his tale for those of us who have never experienced this kind of madness. In that sense, to paraphrase Adorno, writing has become a homeland for both Seghers and the narrator, who slowly comes to embrace a revolutionary point-of-view as he lives the life of the dead writer seeking asylum.
We readers understand, too, that fiction is more than merely communicating facts, but a place of refuge for the weary--a point of contact where disparate (and desperate) people might embrace a humanity denied to them by certain social or political restrictions, might cross boundaries and barriers that are impossible to cross otherwise, and might build a community of shared experiences that reflect the values of men and women who are so often lost in the system. In short, fiction gives voice to the voiceless, and puts a human face on complex, worldwide issues such as the current refugee crisis.
Seghers' novel remains just as relevant today as it was when first published in 1944. As Peter Conrad write in his introduction: "It is sobering and alarming to rediscover this book: what Seghers saw as an emergency has now become what we call normality." In reading this novel, we come to value not only the importance of providing refugees with comfort and compassion, but also of the essential need for nations to work together to maintain free and open borders, especially in the face of forces (sometimes violent) that might threaten to destroy that international ideal.
In the past two years, the refugee crisis in the Middle East and Europe (and now across the world) has been the most widespread since World War II. It has challenged the ability of free nations to balance compassion with security and has changed the political climate to the extent that xenophobia and populist dissent are now threatening to overrun the free world. In reading the fiction of the mid-twentieth century, we find that these issues are nothing new. Indeed, in this fiction we can learn important lessons and gain new perspectives on the challenges that continue to face us today.
Anna Seghers' novel draws on her own experiences as a refugee from Germany in the 30s, when simply existing as a person was a crime and crossing borders for freedom (and basic survival) was a Herculean task that could lead to capture, murder, or suicide. Transit is narrated by a man who has escaped a Nazi concentration camp and is seeking simply to live a life of peace in France. He soon discovers that this is impossible, as he becomes part of a group of refugees trying to escape France before the arrival of the German army.
The resulting bureaucratic nightmare requires refugees to have an endless amount of papers and visas, which are nearly impossible to attain. One must have a resident visa merely to temporary reside in France, and only on the condition that one is looking to leave. In order to leave, one must have a visa to enter the country of refuge. However, one cannot simply travel to that country without first stopped at other countries in-between, either by land, air, or sea. Therefore, one also needs transit visas for each stop in-between. By the time a person can obtain the proper entry visas, their transit visas become out-of-date, and vice versa. Since it takes so long to obtain these visas, one risks out-staying a resident visa, for which one must continually re-apply, but which are perhaps the most difficult to obtain.
It is a Kafkaesque nightmare that leads the narrator to adopt the persona of a fellow refugee --a writer who has recently committed suicide (possibly a reference to Seghers' acquaintance Walter Benjamin?). As the narrator goes in circles trying to either stay in France or obtain the proper visas to flee to Mexico, he runs into the girlfriend of the deceased writer, who is currently searching for her lover, whom she doesn't realize is dead.
Lost in all this paperwork is the humanity of the refugees, who are shuffled around like so many cattle, often rounded up for little or no reason and sent back to concentration camps. Our narrator gives us an idea of the constant fear and despair felt by these men and women who discover that their only crimes are being alive and trying to cross borders to survive. The novel is written as a narrative told by the unnamed narrator at a cafe, which suggests that he is not only adopting the persona of a writer, but has also become a storyteller himself, spinning his tale for those of us who have never experienced this kind of madness. In that sense, to paraphrase Adorno, writing has become a homeland for both Seghers and the narrator, who slowly comes to embrace a revolutionary point-of-view as he lives the life of the dead writer seeking asylum.
We readers understand, too, that fiction is more than merely communicating facts, but a place of refuge for the weary--a point of contact where disparate (and desperate) people might embrace a humanity denied to them by certain social or political restrictions, might cross boundaries and barriers that are impossible to cross otherwise, and might build a community of shared experiences that reflect the values of men and women who are so often lost in the system. In short, fiction gives voice to the voiceless, and puts a human face on complex, worldwide issues such as the current refugee crisis.
Seghers' novel remains just as relevant today as it was when first published in 1944. As Peter Conrad write in his introduction: "It is sobering and alarming to rediscover this book: what Seghers saw as an emergency has now become what we call normality." In reading this novel, we come to value not only the importance of providing refugees with comfort and compassion, but also of the essential need for nations to work together to maintain free and open borders, especially in the face of forces (sometimes violent) that might threaten to destroy that international ideal.
clairewords's review against another edition
5.0
An incredible novel, written in a surreal time, while the writer was living in exile in Mexico, Anna Seghers (having left Germany in 1933 to settle in France) was forced (with her husband and two children) to flee from Marseille in 1940, the only port in France at that time that still flew the French flag, the rest under German occupation.
With the help of Varian Fry, ([b:Surrender on Demand|426764|Surrender on Demand|Varian Fry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1174658690i/426764._SY75_.jpg|415812]) an American who came to Marseille to help artists, writers, intellectuals escape Europe, they found safe passage to Mexico, where they stayed until able to return to East Berlin, where she lived until her death in 1983.
While in Mexico she wrote this thought-provoking, accomplished, "existential, political, literary thriller" novel narrated by a 27 year old German man who has escaped two camps before finding himself in Paris and doing a favour for a friend, comes into possession of a suitcase of documents belonging to a German writer Weidel, who he will learn has taken his own life.
The young man takes the suitcase to Marseille, where he hopes to stay, something only possible if one proves one has the documents to leave. Alongside many others genuinely trying to flee, we follow him to hotels, cafes, consulates, shipping offices, travel bureaus and stand in line as he apples for visa and stamps that he has little invested interest in, observing the absurd demands made of people trying to find safe passage to what they hope is a free world.
The man he knows is dead has awife widow waiting for him in Marseille, her story becomes part of the young man's quest, in this transitory city that holds a thin promise of a lifeline to the fulfillment of desperate dreams for so many refugees.
The complexity of requirements means many more are rejected than succeed and all risk being sent to one of the camps that the authorities send those whose papers are not in order.
Because our narrator is alone, without family and not in possesion of a story that invokes much sympathy in the reader, he quite likes this city and would like to stay, it removes something of the terror of what people were actually going through, allowing the reader to see the situation outside of the tragic humanitarian crisis it was, and instead to see the absurd situation and demands all refugees encounter, when they are forced to flee homes they don't want to leave to go to a safe(r) place equally they don't necessarily want to go to, but will do so to survive and in an attempt to keep their families together.
I highlighted so many passages, that I will go back and reread, and even though this book was written 77 years ago, there is something about the bureaucracy that still rings true in France, for immigrants today.
The depiction of Marseille, though in a time of terror is also evocative of that city today, only the places mentioned here are now frequented by people from a different set of countries, those who have fled or left in search of something better in the last 30 years, from parts of Africa, Vietnam, Lebanon and those who need to disappear for a while, finding anonymity and comradeship in the small alleys and cafes of Marseille, a city of temporary refuge, where everyone has a story that begins elsewhere.
With the help of Varian Fry, ([b:Surrender on Demand|426764|Surrender on Demand|Varian Fry|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1174658690i/426764._SY75_.jpg|415812]) an American who came to Marseille to help artists, writers, intellectuals escape Europe, they found safe passage to Mexico, where they stayed until able to return to East Berlin, where she lived until her death in 1983.
While in Mexico she wrote this thought-provoking, accomplished, "existential, political, literary thriller" novel narrated by a 27 year old German man who has escaped two camps before finding himself in Paris and doing a favour for a friend, comes into possession of a suitcase of documents belonging to a German writer Weidel, who he will learn has taken his own life.
The young man takes the suitcase to Marseille, where he hopes to stay, something only possible if one proves one has the documents to leave. Alongside many others genuinely trying to flee, we follow him to hotels, cafes, consulates, shipping offices, travel bureaus and stand in line as he apples for visa and stamps that he has little invested interest in, observing the absurd demands made of people trying to find safe passage to what they hope is a free world.
The man he knows is dead has a
The complexity of requirements means many more are rejected than succeed and all risk being sent to one of the camps that the authorities send those whose papers are not in order.
Because our narrator is alone, without family and not in possesion of a story that invokes much sympathy in the reader, he quite likes this city and would like to stay, it removes something of the terror of what people were actually going through, allowing the reader to see the situation outside of the tragic humanitarian crisis it was, and instead to see the absurd situation and demands all refugees encounter, when they are forced to flee homes they don't want to leave to go to a safe(r) place equally they don't necessarily want to go to, but will do so to survive and in an attempt to keep their families together.
I highlighted so many passages, that I will go back and reread, and even though this book was written 77 years ago, there is something about the bureaucracy that still rings true in France, for immigrants today.
The depiction of Marseille, though in a time of terror is also evocative of that city today, only the places mentioned here are now frequented by people from a different set of countries, those who have fled or left in search of something better in the last 30 years, from parts of Africa, Vietnam, Lebanon and those who need to disappear for a while, finding anonymity and comradeship in the small alleys and cafes of Marseille, a city of temporary refuge, where everyone has a story that begins elsewhere.
lectrice's review against another edition
4.0
4.5: Another great pick for my European Lit course this fall! Very bleak and possibly more Kafkaesque than Kafka (!) so might be a hard sell with students, but also darkly funny so fingers crossed. Now I want to see the recent film adaptation 🙂
swinglifeaway's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
3.25
emgilbertie's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25