The Passenger: THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Paperback – September 30, 2021

Riveting. The story reads like a growing nightmare, threatening tentacles growing from every street corner, out of every building. Which way to turn, go back, don't go back. Watch every corner, every person's eyes. Until one becomes so confused, and resultingly delusional, and cannot discern between reality and the simple expectation that wiping away the growing horror will make things better. A lie constantly repeated makes people think, well?, if it's constantly being repeated, then? it's true? That is how a society comes apart at its seams.it is the horror that confronts the lead character in this book. A society that fails to see the underlying menace that spreads like a virus becomes infected by it, and it mutates and spreads. Nothing changes throughout the course of human history. The written account as the author envisioned it, this nightmare, in this book is as accurate as any living witness to the horrors of a political party's intent to eradicate an entire segment of society. It is the same viciousness, the same lie that permeates the present. Lies, intentional, to deceive and thereby enhance a political opportunism that is only self-serving. Yet, as it was in Nazi Germany, there is now the same kind of following, believing what they want to believe, rather than what is true and what is not true, listening to the very mindless political personalities that foment a gross distortion of reality to suit their own ends. It's the very lesson taught in the earliest school grades: How to distinguish truth and fact from lies and fiction.

This is a story of a Jewish businessman fleeing from Nazi persecution, but says a lot more about humanity and how we are quick to turn on family and friends in a crisis. I almost stopped reading after the 2nd chapter, I am glad I didn't since it turned out to be excellent book.

I didn't intend to read this right away, but I usually read the first few pages of a new book to get a feel for it. I couldn't put it down and read 70 pages in that first sitting. What makes the novel incredibly fascinating is that it was written during the Nazi period and wasn't a post-war reflection: the author died in 1942 and couldn't have been aware of the full extent of the Holocaust. Instead, he captures the horror of everyday life as a Jewish man in Nazi Germany and brilliantly illustrates how pervasive systematic racism can be.The translation is so smooth, too, that you'd think it was written in English.

It had its good parts and it’s bad parts but mostly it was tedious. It has Kafkaesque feel for those who like that sort of prose. For someone interested in something written at the beginning of the Holocaust I'd recommend it.

I couldn't put this book down. It's a prescient and touching story that increasingly veers into a Kafkaesque tale, capturing the mood and psyche of German Jews on the eve of destruction.

The Passenger seems to me to be a realistic story of the panicked attempts to leave Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The story is gripping and I enjoyed it.

One of the best pieces of literature depicting workings in Nazi Germany, written from the POV of the hunted. The frustration, the utter hopelessness, and the gradual descending into insanity of the protagonist Silvermann makes it a riveting read. Wonderfully portrays the sheer power of authoritarianism over middle class existence and aspirations. The English translation is top notch as well. Should be better publicized and more read.

Such a prescient, realtime view of events on the ground in the late 30s. One aryan-looking Jew’s plight. I couldn’t put it down.