The Seventh Cross

Originally published in 1942 and available now in its first unabridged English translation, this trenchant tale about life in Nazi Germany is notable for being one of the earliest works of fiction to acknowledge the existence of concentration camps. In the early years of World War II, seven prisoners escape from the Westhofen concentration camp into the nearby town, where several of their spouses and families live, including the ex-lover and child of one prisoner, George Heisler. Seghers provides a panoramic view of the town and its citizens, many of whom are indifferent or oblivious to the turmoil of the distant war, but her main point-of-view character is George, who struggles desperately to elude recapture and frets that “the community that supports and surrounds every person—his blood relatives, lovers, teachers, bosses, and friends—had been turned into a network of living traps.” The novel’s title refers to a torture reserved for concentration camp escapees that bears out Heisler’s fears about “how profoundly and how terribly outside forces can reach into a human being.” Seghers skillfully expresses the inner lives of her characters and their stories are consistently suspenseful. For all the grimness of its events, the novel ends with an affirmation of the human spirit that “in that innermost core there was something that was unassailable and inviolable.” (May)