Sansibar oder der letzte Grund

Author's Text
Alfred Andersch, born in Munich in 1914, was, after the war, among other things, an editorial assistant to Erich Kästner at the Neue Zeitung, co-published the magazine Der Ruf with Hans Werner Richter, participated in the first meetings of Group 47, and was the editor of the literary magazine Texte und Zeichen. Since leaving his position as head of the radio-essay editorial team, which he founded at Süddeutscher Rundfunk, he lived as a freelance writer in Switzerland, where he died in 1980.

Blurb
In 1937, a group of people gathers in the Baltic seaside town of Rerik: the communist functionary Gregor, the Jewish woman Judith, the fisherman Knudsen, his shipboy dreaming of Zanzibar, and Pastor Helander. Each of them, both individually and collectively, has a single goal regarding the endangered sculpture "The Reading Cloister Scholar" by Ernst Barlach: to leave Germany. Zanzibar or The Last Resort, published in 1957 as Andersch's first novel, is a modern classic.