One of the most interesting ways I’ve realized to read Kafka is to avoid looking for any kinds of symbolic or metaphorical readings within his writing. Sure, look for metaphor in language, but to stop looking for allegorical or symbolic value of his subjects. I think this is mostly a good practice for any kind of reading. If you see an allegory or symbol at play, great, and if you don’t, great. To some extent a book that relies so heavily on metaphorical or allegorical or symbolic value can easily fail, be fragile, or have no there, there.
This novel reminds me a lot of Kafka in that way. There’s a kind of waiting room feeling going on throughout, but when you read it straight for what it’s representing, it’s more terrifying and frustrating than any kind of symbolic representation.
We have a young male narrator who has recently escaped from a French-occupied territory concentration camp (likely for political prisoners than Jewish prisoners), and he’s wandering around Marseilles looking for passage away from France. It’s the late 1930s and this is a city occupied, but not one that feels under assault. And so most of the novel is centered around the various diplomatic (to a small degree) and bureaucratic (to a large degree) questions of how will he be able to leave, through where, and by what means.
It’s scary because he’s a kind of refugee, but without a refugee status, and so he can’t claim much beyond a clear fear for his life, and a need to leave. And given the reticent and fragile political alliances among various potential avenues (Spain, the US, and Mexico) it’s not clear he’ll be able to go anywhere. Add to this the fact that’s he a nobody, except to himself and to us, his readers.
This novel was written in 1942 and published in 1944 and Seghers would go on to become a citizen of East Germany, hence why a lot of her writing is less well known, but that stateless feeling she must have felt as a Jewish Germany in the 1930s absolutely soaks this novel.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Transit-York-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590176251/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1550505150&sr=8-1&keywords=transit+anna+seghers)