Flotsam: a novel (1st Ballantine Books ed.)

'Flotsam' is a terrifying portrait of Europe as the Nazi shadow falls over the continent.

Political dissidents, Jews, medical students, petty criminals: Among the thousands of displaced persons travelling the unpaved roads of Europe, there are Steiner and Kern.

Both have irritated officials for outstaying their two-week sojourn 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.

Until he is escorted from that one too. Living hand-to-mouth, selling shoelaces and safety pins for a few pennies, Steiner and Kern find that, remarkably, there are still pleasures to be had.

Paris, for one; love, for another.