Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz was born in Berlin in 1915. He left Germany in 1935 for Oslo, Norway, studied at the Sorbonne in Paris, and wrote two novels, including The Passenger. Boschwitz eventually settled in England in 1939, although he was interned as a German "enemy alien" after war broke out-despite his Jewish background-and subsequently shipped to Australia. In 1942, Boschwitz was allowed to return to England, but his ship was torpedoed by a German submarine and he was killed along with all 362 passengers. He was twenty-seven years old.A fascinating historical rediscovery shed light on the closing borders and rising prejudices of current times... in a tense, rising nightmare that's timelessly relevant
Guardian, Books of the Year
This thriller's rediscovery has become an international publishing sensation, which feels like some restitution
The Times, Books of the Year
Part John Buchan, part Franz Kafka and wholly riveting. It is also uncannily prescient [...] a gripping novel that plunges the reader into the gloom of Nazi Germany as the darkness was descending
- Jonathan Freedland, Guardian
There have been a number of great novels about the Second World War that have come to light again in recent times, most notably Suite Française and Alone in Berlin. I'm not sure that The Passenger might not be the greatest of them
- David Mills, Sunday Times
Gripping and viscerally affecting... Boschwitz's feel for his setting and characters makes most of the historical fiction written about the Nazi era seem simplistic and ersatz
- Jake Kerridge, Telegraph
By turns claustrophobic, dizzying and symbolic, The Passenger is a work with sufficient pace to be a thriller, yet possessed of enough nuance and psychological depth to be of real literary weight
Spectator
This year's essential literary rediscovery
Guardian
Remarkable... disabused, prophetic, and flawlessly penetrating
- André Aciman,
All too chillingly real. Originally published quietly in 1938, this reissue is now a deserving bestseller
Daily Mail
A very welcome rediscovery
- James Owen, The Times
A highly accomplished work, filled with vivid characterisation, sharp dialogue and intensely observed scenes... This English edition, skilfully translated by Philip Boehm, is a fitting memorial to a writer of great insight and talent - and an important historical work that vividly recreates the terror experienced by Jews in 1930s Germany
Financial Times
The Passenger is both a poignant soliloquy on the nature of sudden loss and uncertainty, and a vivid picture of what it was to be Jewish and hunted down as the Nazis embarked on their crusade of extermination... [Silbermann's] sense of terror and incomprehension is captured with a rare immediacy
- Caroline Moorhead, TLS
A riveting, noirish, intensely filmic portrait... a jewel of a rediscovery: At once a deeply satisfying novel and a vital historical document
Wall Street Journal
This rediscovered classic fizzes with frantic fear and energy
Sunday Independent (IE)
'One of the year's great rediscoveries was this harrowing 1938 novel about a Jewish Berliner on the run after Kristallnacht'
ExBerliner (A Book of the Year)
A Book of the Year
Wall Street Journal
'A shocking, moving and suspenseful story with a powerful resonance today'
Daily Express (A Book of the Year)