Overview

A prophetic lost classic from interwar Germany, following a group of Berliners navigating economic turmoil and the rise of fascism, now translated into English for the first time Berlin in the 1920s is the largest city in Europe, a cultural mecca, and a political mess: a hedonistic Babylon, though there's little glamour for the hundreds of thousands out of work, the war wounded, the prostitutes, and the beggars. Come evening they too want to shed their cares at the Jolly Huntsman pub, where they gather to drink, dance, and reassert their pride. But there's disaster lurking in the alleys and flophouses, a disaster that the twenty-two-year-old author Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz saw coming for his nation. In this dark comedy of petty theft, soapbox speeches, and bar fights is the disarray of a country devouring itself. Tragically, Germany's self-destruction engulfed the author, who was killed five years after finishing this novel. When Boschwitz's The Passenger was rediscovered in 2021, it was heralded as a masterpiece that captured the terror of the Nazi reign. Now, Berlin Shuffle--his literary debut from 1937, finally available in English, with a preface by the preeminent translator Philip Boehm--brings to life the society that would enable fascism's takeover. The triumph of one of world literature's spectacular talents, Berlin Shuffle is a dire warning sent from a pivotal moment in history to our own time.

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9781250869494

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Reviews

Praise for The Passenger by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz ""Uncannily prescient . . . The Passenger plunges the reader into the gloom of Nazi Germany as the darkness was descending. It deserved to be read when it was written. It certainly deserves to be read now."" --The Guardian ""A jewel of a rediscovery . . . superbly translated by Philip Boehm . . . The Passenger is a riveting, noirish, intensely filmic portrait of an ambivalent fugitive, cornered but not captured, safest when in motion, at greatest risk when forced to rest."" --Wall Street Journal ""The Passenger reads as though a painting by the German anti-Nazi artist George Grosz has been turned into words, the text almost vibrating with fury at the lies, theft, murder and betrayal. It is also a highly accomplished work, filled with vivid characterisation, sharp dialogue and intensely observed scenes . . . This English edition, skillfully 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 ""Stunning . . . clairvoyant . . . Boschwitz's novel pulsates with fine, understated descriptions . . . One comes away marveling not only at Boschwitz's craftsmanship but at what can only be called his human spirit . . . The Passenger resembles a message in a bottle: cautionary, despairing, a literary warning."" --Ruth Margalit, The New York Review of Books ""Powerful . . . A prophetic and chilling portrait of the terror of life under the Nazi regime . . . compared to masterpieces by Franz Kafka and Hans Fallada."" --The Telegraph ""A major lit-er-ary event . . . Boschwitz's own sto-ry and dev-as-tat-ing nov-el are uncan-ny prophe-cies of our own time marked by the degra-da-tion of human-i-ty in flight, search-ing for a place to call home."" --Jewish Book Council ""A global sensation . . . a literary time capsule . . . Written in 1938, The Passenger arrives now as a remedy for the historical amnesia that encourages repeated misfortune."" --Forward ""The Passenger is so viscerally absorbing that as I turned each page I shuddered, as if from the same chill breeze felt by the novel's main character . . . in his desperate attempt to flee Germany. Indeed, the gem-like precision of Boschwitz's writing evokes, as few other books have, the anxiety and terror . . . in the Third Reich. . . An unnerving, no-holds-barred account of the Nazi regime's escalating war against the Jews."" --Mosaic ""Vibrating with rage at the murder and betrayal of German Jewry . . . this is an enthralling, disturbing but also nuanced story that takes the reader into the heart of the Third Reich's terror state."" --Financial Times ""With The Passenger alone, Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz claims a place alongside the likes of Thomas Mann, Heinrich Böll and Hans Fallada as one of 20th century Germany's greatest novelists."" --New European ""Thriller-tense . . . Like Hans Fallada's Alone in Berlin, The Passenger is a rediscovered book, and not only shares its menacing claustrophobia but more than matches it for potency and profundity."" --New Statesman ""Boschwitz is remarkable not only for his prescience . . . but also for his rare insight and minutely observed depictions of characters from every strata of German society. Witty at the same time that it's tragic, surreal even in its hyper-reality, The Passenger is . . . a masterpiece."" --Kirkus Reviews (starred) ""This brilliant rediscovered thriller is up there with the best Second World War novels. The existential crisis that overtook Jews in Nazi Germany is rivetingly caught."" --The Times (London) ""What a find this is, a novel that lay buried and forgotten for 80 years. It's part John Buchan, part Franz Kafka and completely gripping."" --Jonathan Freedland, Guardian journalist ""The Passenger, a newly recovered classic of the end of Jewish Europe, dramatizes the route to hell with indignant clarity, passion, intelligence, and rueful goddamned humor."" --Joshua Cohen, author of The Netanyahus

""Chilling and vividly portrayed . . . This clear-eyed novel from Boschwitz (The Passenger), who died in 1942, excavates the resentments of a broad cast of German characters as the country slides toward fascism. . . . The plot threads are seamlessly stitched together. . . . Profound."" --Publishers Weekly ""[An] omi-nous vision of pre-Nazi Ger-many--a Ger-many that would trag-i-cal-ly ful-fill Boschwitz's pre-dic-tion"" --Jewish Book Council ""A welcome addition to Boschwitz's oeuvre. . . The book's greatest strength is showing, in day-to-day terms . . . an atmosphere in which a fascist government could arise. . . . In that sense, many of the novel's concerns overlap with those of the present day."" --Kirkus Praise for Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz ""Stunning . . . Clairvoyant . . . One comes away marveling not only at Boschwitz's craftsmanship but at what can only be called his human spirit."" --Ruth Margalit, The New York Review of Books ""A writer of great insight and talent."" --Adam LeBor, Financial Times ""Uncannily prescient . . . It's as if Boschwitz foresaw the complicity of the millions who were bystanders to the wickedness that took place right in front of them."" -Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian ""What Boschwitz saw clearly enough was the utter despoliation of one's identity, of one's trust in the world, and ultimately of one's very humanity."" -André Aciman ""An author who might have become a household name."" -Toby Lichtig, The Wall Street Journal

Author Information

Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz was born in Berlin in 1915. He fled Germany in 1935 and wrote his novels while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1939, he settled in England, but after the war broke out, England interned him as an ""enemy alien""--despite his Jewish background--and shipped him to Australia. In 1942, Boschwitz was allowed to return to England, but his ship was torpedoed by a German submarine, and he was killed at the age of twenty-seven. Philip Boehm has translated more than thirty novels and plays by German and Polish writers, including Herta Müller, Franz Kafka, and Hanna Krall. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, as well as numerous awards, including the Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize and the Ungar German Translation Award from the American Translators Association. He also works as a theater director and playwright.

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