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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
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Categories: Science fiction Fantasy Mystery Romance Business Classic Sports Young adult Humor Memoirs See all categories... |
An extensive and leisurely narrative on 862 pages (in what appears to be font size 9!) in which Feuchtwanger provides a psychological insight into the minds of refugees from National Socialism who have gone into exile in Paris. The novel also examines the actions and motivations of some pro-NS characters. Given the length of the narrative, Feuchtwanger has ample scope to create rounded and convincing characters. Topics: the privations of exile and the struggle to survive in the foreign environment; art or politics as sources of resistance to the National Socialist regime. Catalyst for the action is the kidnapping by the Nazis of a German Jewish journalist who is abducted across the Swiss-German border. Part of the novel concerns the campaign for the release of the kidnapped journalist. Some aspects of this work were inspired by real events. This novel does not give as comprehensive and panoramic a picture of the phenomenon of exile from National Socialism as is provided in Klaus Mann's novel Der Vulkan, but Feuchtwanger's work nevertheless conveys to the reader an impression of the experience of exile.862 very readable pages.(No English translation of this novel appears to exist, and I am not sure about other foreign language versions either. You might, therefore, have to learn German before you read Exil.)
