Erich Maria Remarque · 1962 · exile

Remarque's last completed novel, from his own years as a stateless German. In Lisbon in 1942 a refugee is offered two visas and two tickets to America by a stranger, on one condition: that he listen until morning. What follows is eight years of flight across Europe told in a single night, in the bars of a city everyone is trying to leave.

1. 1
   Osnabruck

   Remarque's own town. Josef Schwarz is denounced by his Nazi brother-in-law, held in a camp and escapes to France - and then, five years later and against every sensible instinct, comes back over the border to find his wife.

2. 2
   Zurich

   They get out together through Switzerland, marry to give Helen a name the transit authorities will accept, and begin the life the book is actually about: papers, consulates, and countries that will let you in but not stay.

3. 3
   Paris

   Five years as an illegal in the city that took every refugee in Europe and gave none of them permission to exist - the Prefecture, the cheap hotels, and the choice between being interned by the Gestapo or the gendarmerie.

4. 4
   Le Vernet

   War comes and the French intern them as enemy aliens, separately - and Schwarz talks his way into her camp pretending to be an electrician come to inspect the wiring, which is the sort of thing the book keeps doing.

5. 5
   Marseille

   Escapes from the camps, and the doctor who fakes Helen's death so she can travel as nobody - and who tells Schwarz privately, the night before, that she is dying anyway and has known it for some time.

6. 6
   Bordeaux

   An abandoned chateau outside the city, and a few weeks that are almost a life - until the Germans occupy it and they move into a boarding house, and the visa business starts again from the beginning.

7. 7
   The Pyrenees

   South to the border on foot and by whatever will carry them, in the summer of 1940 with half of France on the same roads - and Portugal on the far side, which is neutral and has a harbour.

8. 8
   Lisbon

   Two visas, two tickets, and a ship to America in the harbour - and a man who no longer has any use for either of them, spending one night in the bars telling the whole story to a stranger in exchange for being listened to.