What I've Been Reading
As we approach the one-year anniversary of this Substack, I’ve been looking ahead and thinking about how to expand things here in 2026. With that in mind, here’s the third in an informal, and somewhat accidental, recent series of pieces on books I’ve been reading. I like this format, and both this website’s analytics and your feedback inform me that many readers do too. I sometimes wish I could just review books for a living. Unfortunately, though, there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to write everything I’d like to about everything I read. Still, I find these capsule writeups do at least allow to me say something — while also, I hope, promoting some books that are worth your time. In this case, two among those found below may will inspire more detailed writing at some point.
For now, a happy new year to you all and I hope you enjoy. My deepest thanks to everyone who has subscribed and, if you’re able to take out a paid subscription and support my work, I hope you’ll consider doing so here.
-Luke
The Passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (1938)
“Who could have imagined anything like it? In the middle of Europe, in the twentieth century!”
Most of you, I expect, will have never heard of Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz. Until recently, neither had I. In fact, virtually no one had. That’s because this simply remarkable novel, written when Boschwitz was just 23 years old, went unnoticed in his short lifetime and was only rediscovered upon its republication a few years ago. Boschwitz was a German with Jewish ancestry who, along with his mother, fled the country when a family member was murdered for criticizing the Nazi regime’s anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws. After a stint in Norway, the pair relocated to Britain where they were detained and eventually deported to Australia. Released in 1942, both were killed when their ship, the MV Aboss, was torpedoed by a u-boat. Boschwitz’s last works were aboard, and a casualty as well.
What does one even say about The Passenger? It’s an absolutely gripping story written in crisp and dynamic prose that masterfully captures the peculiar mixture of boredom, terror, and absurdity experienced by people living in totalitarian societies. Its protagonist, Otto Silbermann, is a Jewish businessman who narrowly evades arrest in the wake of Kristallnacht. We then accompany Silbermann as he makes frantic calls to family, has brushes with the law, engages in casual conversations with oblivious SS men on trains, and so on. In the best sense, there are obvious shades of Kafka here, and The Passenger would count as a significant literary achievement for an author of any age.
