The Night in Lisbon in Around the World in 80 Books

Sep 22, 2018 Steve rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I'm a fan. Remarque is of course best known for his great anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front. But he was in no way a one-hit wonder. He remained a significant popular (and to my mind, literary) novelist throughout his life. He was also a fierce anti-fascist. The Nazis hated him, so much so that they would execute (behead) his sister, Elfriede Scholz, in 1943, in part because they couldn't get him. Oh, his sister was also opponent of the regime, but her famous brother was on their mind I'm a fan. Remarque is of course best known for his great anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front. But he was in no way a one-hit wonder. He remained a significant popular (and to my mind, literary) novelist throughout his life. He was also a fierce anti-fascist. The Nazis hated him, so much so that they would execute (behead) his sister, Elfriede Scholz, in 1943, in part because they couldn't get him. Oh, his sister was also opponent of the regime, but her famous brother was on their mind when they shipped her to the infamous Plotzensee Prison.

The Night in Lisbon is in some respects, with its interest in the plight of refugees from Nazi Germany, is reminiscent of the 1945's Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country. The main character, "Schwarz," is also a man without a country. He has also spent some time in a German concentration camp, and has lived a shadow life on the borders of France and Switzerland. In an act that is as crazy as it is courageous, he returns to Germany to see his wife Helen (who, unknown to him, is terminally ill with cancer). Schwarz and Helen have been separated from each other for five years. This act, which involves swimming the Rhine, is a transformative one. Up until that time Swartz had evidently been something of a wordy pedant, which had led, at least in part, to the separation. Though it's never said, the reader assumes that area of conflict between "Swharz" and Helen is how to respond to the regime they both hate. Helen is more interested in action, and despises "bourgeois stagnation." (Oh, the labels they had back then.)

Schwarz finds Helen, but not without a fear filled journey through Hitler's bizarre Germany. Schwarz's observations see something that is less a political movement and more a twisted religious one from another planet.

I took the emptiest streets to the cathedral. It was not far. In Krahnstrasse a company of marching soldiers passed me. They were singing a song I did not know. On the Domplatz there were more soldiers. A little farther off, by the three crosses of the Little Church, a crowd had gathered -- two or three hundred people, most of them in party uniform. I heard a voice and looked for the speaker; there wasn't one. Finally my eyes lit on a black loudspeaker propped up on a platform. It stood there under a light, naked and alone, an automaton, screaming about the right to reconquer every inch of German soil, the Greater Germany, revenge.

Remarque, in numerous passages (some of the best I've read in fiction), effectively evokes the claustrophobic and fear drenched atmosphere of Hitler's new Germany. But there isn't much relief beyond Germany's borders, since the darkness is spreading and the clock is ticking toward war. "Schwarz" (we never learn his real name) and Helen escape Germany, and live the day to day life of refugees, finding shelter where ever they can. At one point they take up residence in an abandoned castle. It's kind of weird, and very reminiscent of Doctor Zhivago's ice palace scene, but also strangely beautiful, providing some necessary relief from the days of dread. It shouldn't work, but it does. Eventually Helen and Schwarz are captured by the French police, and sent to separate refugee camps. What follows is their eventual reuniting, Helen's progressing sickness, the war, a bad Nazi brother, and the Foreign Legion. Sad and romantic stuff, and I loved every page of it. Remarque may be a romantic, but he also poses the Big Question of existence. It may be inexact, but he reminds me a lot of Camus. They have similar Human hearts. I've left out, up to this point, the framing device of the novel, which involves a desperate refugee who encounters Schwarz in Lisbon. The frame is basically this refugee listening to Schwarz tell his tale. It's well done, since this character (a stand-in for every desperate person trying to escape the Nazis) interjects just enough during Schwarz's story, and thoughtfully enough, to exist as a real person and not just a plot device. Highly recommended. ...more

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May 25, 2015 Karen rated it really liked it

Shelves: travel-the-world

I'm not really sure how to review this book. It has some elements of Stefan Zweig and Georges Simenon (The Train). The story takes place during the summer before September 1939. Lisbon becomes the portal to freedom in America, as long as the ships keep sailing. An unnamed character becomes the sounding board for Schwartz (the name on his papers, not his real name). Schwartz tells his story, from the time of his incarceration in the concentration camp, to the day we meet him in Lisbon. ...more

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Oct 10, 2011 Stefanie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: germany

Lissabon, 1942: Aus ganz Europa strömen die Flüchtlinge, jeder hofft auf die Möglichkeit, einen Platz auf einem Schiff nach Amerika ergattern zu können. Auch der Erzähler ist verzweifelt, möchte mit seiner Frau das Land verlassen. Als ihm ein Unbekannter, der sich Josef Schwarz nennt, zwei Tickets anbietet, wenn er sich als Gegenleistung nur eine Nacht lang dessen Geschichte anhört, ist er skeptisch. Doch am Ende hört er zu und erfährt von einer unglaublichen Reise zurück ins besetzte Deutschlan ...more

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Apr 15, 2023 Tony rated it liked it

Shelves: translated-fiction, audio, novels, war-ww2, setting-europe

Remarque is of course best known for his World War I masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front -- a book that, along with several others, was banned by the Nazis. He eventually left Germany for a life of exile in Switzerland, had his German citizenship revoked, and in the postwar years, emigrated to America. In this, his final completed book, he writes about the plight of wartime German refugees trying to make it across Europe to Lisbon, where passage to America was everyone's dream.

The book t ...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Deedee rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, translation, 6-star-books, historical-fiction-world-war-two, world-europe-germany, challenge-2011-summer

Wow. Fantastic. The frame of the story is that of a man telling another man the story of his past few years. That story concerns a man who has incurred the wrath of the Nazi government in the late 1930's. He flees to France, only to return to Germany due to his love of his wife. The rest of the story is centered on the lovers and their flight from the Nazis. Recommended.
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