With a startling sense of immediacy, this tense and gripping novel whirls the reader into the vortex of up-to-date life in cosmopolitan Europe. It is a tale of personal flight. Franziska, a beautiful German woman, impulsively escapes from an unpleasant marriage and takes a train to Venice. There, in the bleak wintertime atmosphere of this fabulous city, she is unwittingly drawn into the cross-currents of a dangerous struggle whose source lies in the turbulence of war and international intrigue … Suspense, murder, and unexpected fulfillment mark the climax of this powerful and compelling story. In skillfully unfolding the fates of his characters caught in the complexities of their age, Alfred Andersch eloquently records a pattern of life in Europe today.

A boy dreaming of Huckleberry Finn, a mortally ill Pastor, a disillusioned Communist, a young Jewish girl running for her life - meet in a half-derelict Baltic fishing village and are drawn into a daring plan of escape from Nazi Germany. At the center of their plan is a small statue in the Pastor's church, a statue which is to be confiscated because it is politically dangerous, a statue so beautiful and powerful that it welds together the strangely assorted band of refugees. This unusual novel - unusual in both form and content - is a masterpiece of condensed dramatic writing. Andersch investigates the many needs for flight and the strange loyalties which sometimes make escape impossible.

An eighth grade Latin lesson at a Gymnasium in the late 1920s: What begins as an ordinary class for student Franz Kien takes a sudden turn when headmaster Himmler enters the classroom, turning the lesson into a humiliating ordeal for Franz. In this chillingly topical text, Andersch shows how the darkest chapter of German history began to unfold in classrooms.