Flotsam A Novel

FLOTSAM Political dissidents, Jews, medical students, petty criminals. Among the thousands of displaced persons traveling the unpaved roads of Europe, there are Steiner and Kern. Both have irritated officials for outstaying their cold two-week welcome in Czechoslovakia. And so they must leave. Not that either has any place to go. Not in 1939. But when a man is led by a guard to the border of one country, he must try another one. Until he is escorted from that one too. Living hand-to-mouth, selling shoelaces and safety pins for a few pennies, there are still pleasures to be had in such a life. Paris, for one; love for another. For amidst the heartless cruelty and cold-blooded laws of the Nazi state, there is still humanity and kindness. And there is incomparable joy in falling in love, surviving, and telling your story so it is never forgotten.

Erich Maria Remarque wrote the most popular anti-war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front, in 1929, a realistic account of trench warfare during World War I. Born in Osnabrâck, Westphalia, Germany, in 1898, Remarque emigrated to the United States in 1939. He is also the author of The Road Back, Three Comrades, Arch of Triumph, The Spark of Life, Heaven Has No Favorites, The Night in Lisbon, Shadows in Paradise and A Time to Love and a Time to Die. He died in 1970.