Transit

"The stunning second novel of a trilogy that began with Outline, one of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books ... (more)

"The stunning second novel of a trilogy that began with Outline, one of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of 2015 In the wake of family collapse, a writer and her two young sons move to London. The process of upheaval is the catalyst for a number of transitions--personal, moral, artistic, practical--as she endeavors to construct a new reality for herself and her children. In the city she is made to confront aspects of living she has, until now, avoided, and to consider questions of vulnerability and power, death and renewal, in what becomes her struggle to reattach herself to, and believe in, life. Filtered through the impersonal gaze of its keenly intelligent protagonist, Transit sees Rachel Cusk delve deeper into the themes first raised in her critically acclaimed Outline, and offers up a penetrating and moving reflection on childhood and fate, the value of suffering, the moral problems of personal responsibility, and the mystery of change. In this precise, short, and yet epic cycle of novels, Cusk manages to describe the most elemental experiences, the liminal qualities of life, through a narrative near-silence that draws language toward it. She captures with unsettling restraint and honesty the longing to both inhabit and flee one's life and the wrenching ambivalence animating our desire to feel real. "-- (less)

"Having escaped from a Nazi concentration camp in Germany in 1937, and later a camp in Rouen, the nameless twenty-seven-... (more)

"Having escaped from a Nazi concentration camp in Germany in 1937, and later a camp in Rouen, the nameless twenty-seven-year-old German narrator of Seghers's multilayered masterpiece ends up in the dusty seaport of Marseille. Along the way he is asked to deliver a letter to a man named Weidel in Paris and discovers Weidel has committed suicide, leaving behind a suitcase containing letters and the manuscript of a novel. As he makes his way to Marseille to find Weidel{u2019}s widow, the narrator assumes the identity of a refugee named Seidler, though the authorities think he is really Weidel. There in the giant waiting room of Marseille, the narrator converses with the refugees, listening to their stories over pizza and wine, while also gradually piecing together the story of Weidel, whose manuscript has shattered the narrator{u2019}s "deathly boredom," bringing him to a deeper awareness of the transitory world the refugees inhabit as they wait and wait for that most precious of possessions: transit papers."--Page 4 of cover. (less)

Past and present merge in this alluring puzzle from Christian Petzold, which follows Georg (Franz Rogowski), a refugee f... (more)

Past and present merge in this alluring puzzle from Christian Petzold, which follows Georg (Franz Rogowski), a refugee from fascism who pursues Marie (Paula Beer), the wife of the dead man whose identity he has assumed. Official Selection at the **Berlin International Film Festival**, **Toronto International Film Festival**, and **The New York Film Festival**. (less)