The Passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
The Passenger is a prophecy come true. It’s that rare novel that speaks of its time (1938), to its time (Germany, under the Nazis), and a host of possible futures. It’s a novelistic expression of Rilke’s You must change your life, laced with Kafkaesque anxiety and rational paranoia, with a Hamlet of sorts at the helm. The author, Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, was all of 23 when he wrote it, and just 27 when he died.
Written in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, the novel tells the story of Otto Silbermann, a respected Jewish businessman who slowly but surely realizes the existential threat to his life posed by the Nazis.