I loved this book set in 1940 Marseille, France as refugees attempt to flee Europe to the safety of other countries. The book is narrated by a young German man (we never learn his real name) who has escaped prison camps in Germany, by swimming across the Rhine, and France. While in Paris, he is asked by a friend to deliver a letter to a man named Weidel. He discovers that Weidel has committed suicide and discovers an unfinished manuscript and some letters to Weidel's wife. He makes his way to Marseille to find this wife and when there appropriates the name and papers of Weidel. Once in Marseille, he joins the absurd lifestyle of those waiting for their multiple papers and permissions to allow them to travel abroad, dealing with unhelpful, incompetent people and systems that rarely allow things to move along smoothly. The young man enjoys his life in Marseille and the people he meets and doesn't actually want to leave, though he's only allowed to stay if he's trying to leave. He ends up unintentionally finding Weidel's wife and his experiences entwine with hers.

There is obviously a lot of action going on here, but actually the book is just as much about the boredom, inanity, and just waiting of life in Marseille. There is much time spent in cafes, eating pizza and drinking wine, and talking about the transit visa process. People share little about their actual selves but make connections through their shared, even if not talked about, experiences. I loved the tone of this book, the absurdity of the situations, and the subtle insights into this aspect of the war experience.

Anna Seghers herself lived an interesting life. She was a German Jewish Communist who left Germany in the 1930s for France. During the war she left France through Marseille for Mexico, later returning to live in East Germany. She obviously drew on her experiences in Marseille to craft this book as she wrote it upon arriving in Mexico. I would highly recommend this book and will be keeping it to reread sometime in the future. ( )

"It was all a puzzle to me, a fruitless and impenetrable jumble of nonsense that wasn't worth untangling."

WHY????

Ok good points first, there's certain Casablanca-like elements which kept me momentarily distracted. It gives an interesting viewpoint of WWII, set in defeated but unoccupied france. And given that refugees and immigration are a hot-topic these days there is some value in the beauacratic nightmare this paints.

Neautral point, the writing can be a bit impressionistic at times and felt quite Kafka-esque in places.

On the downside the protagonist of this is so worthless, so disengaged from whats happening, so petty, childish, selfish and utterly pointless that i have no idea why this book was written.

I felt like Frank Grimes watching Homer Simpson. In a normal situation this guys existence would be ignorable, but in a warzone with actually worthwhile people around him, having bad things happen to them while this waste of space continues unmolested... it felt like a major argument against the existence of god(s). ( )

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Seghers-Transit/104157

> Ce roman brille par son mélange astucieux d'éléments d'un thriller et d'un roman politique, par sa création d'une atmosphère menaçante et désespérante pour tous ceux qui sont à la recherche d'amis et de transits, et d'un climat de suspicion menaçant dans un milieu infesté par une bureaucratie collaboratrice et corrompue et par des réseaux de résistants manipulateurs et de mouchards vénaux.
Lecture hautement recommandée.
—Danieljean (Babelio) ( )

Anne Seghers schildert in ihrem berühmten Exilroman ein Emigrantenschicksal im zweiten Weltkrieg. Der namenlose Ich-Erzähler ist aus einem deutschen Konzentrationslager entkommen und gelangt in Paris durch Zufall an die Papiere eines verstorbenen Schriftstellers. Damit flieht er weiter in den unbesetzten Teil Frankreichs bis nach Marseille, damals der letzte Zufluchtsort zahlloser Emigranten.

Seghers beschreibt das Leben dieser Heimatlosen zwischen den teilweisen grotesken Versuchen Visa oder Überfahrten in die freie Welt zu ergattern und deren Existenzsuche im Schmelztigel Marseille.

Neben dem realisitischen Bild, welches die Schriftstellerin auch aufgrund eigener Erfahrungen zu vermitteln im Stande ist, überzeugen auch die literarischen Topoi. Der zwischen Entwicklungs-, Abenteuer-, Beziehungsroman und Dokumentation anzusiedelnde glänzt durch eine spannende Handlung, seiner flüssigen Erzählweise, absurd-grotesken Elementen und eindrucksvoll gezeichneten Charakteren. ( )

”You know of course what unoccupied France was like in the fall of 1940. The cities’ train stations, their shelters, and even the public squares and churches were full of refugees. They came from the north, the occupied territory and the ‘forbidden zone,’ from the Departments of Alsace, Lorraine, and the Moselle. And even as I was fleeing to Paris I realized these were merely the remnants of those wretched human masses as so many had died on the road or on the trains. But I hadn’t counted on the fact that many would be born on the way. While I was searching for a place to sleep in the Toulouse train station, I had to climb over a woman lying among suitcases, bundles and piles of guns, nursing a baby. How the world has aged in this single year! The infant looked old and wrinkled, the nursing mother’s hair was gray, and the faces of the baby’s two little brothers watching over her shoulder seemed shameless, old, and sad. Old also were the eyes of these two boys from whom nothing had been concealed, neither the mystery of death nor the mystery of birth.” (Page 30)

The unnamed narrator in Anna Seghers brilliant WWII novel has escaped from a Nazi concentration camp and has made his way to Marsailles where the city teems with refugees waiting to board a ship, any ship, in order to escape the uncertain fate that awaits them all. The unbelievable bureaucratic red tape that delays, suspends and defers the attainment of the ubiquitous ‘transit papers’ turns the city into a waiting room for refugees where the unlikely narrator hears their stories and shares their experiences while pondering his own tentative future.

The story of refugees of this time or of our present day share many of the same qualities, so this novel offered a lot for the reader to think about in regard to the present day refugees, worldwide. The suffering, uncertainty and hardships are hard to accept without pondering how fortunate we are to not be in their shoes. Seghers novel brilliantly and in beautiful language shows us all we need to know while at the same time reading like a thriller. Very highly recommended. ( )