REVIEW: The Passenger (Ulrich Boschwitz)

Book: The Passenger 

Author: Ulrich Boschwitz

My rating: 3.5/5.

Premise: Berlin, November 1938. Synagogues are being burnt to the ground, Jews rounded up and their businesses destroyed. Otto Silbermann has managed to evade the escalating violence of the Nazi regime. But when stormtroopers come battering on his door, he flees his apartment and begins a desperate race to escape his homeland that is no longer home.

⚠️[CW: anti-semitism] 

I enjoyed this book. You get a real sense of how the lives of so many Jews were turned upside down and how restricted they were during the year before the war. Through Otto, we can see the injustice as suddenly he's homeless and even just his name could bring him violence. We follow him trying to work out what to do and where to go. And all the while he's desperately clinging on to the life he's known. It's a bittersweet read because we know worse was still to come and so I was practically shouting at Otto to flee the whole time. A sad but important read.