Remarque's subject [in "Flotsam"] is profoundly important and alive with tragedy: the fate of the exiles, the refugees, the many thousands who have been made homeless in recent years because of race or political sentiments. It is from Hitler's Germany that most of these unfortunates have been uprooted, and it is with Hitler's victims that "Flotsam" is chiefly concerned….
Remarque has fully depicted or briefly illuminated almost every aspect of the exile's life, with the very different responses of very different characters to a common fate. He has painted an animated, changing gallery of haunting portraits. The episodes that he has selected for the elaboration of his theme range from the horrible, through the monotonous, to the ludicrous; and he makes every one of them, of whatever kind, effective. He has been content to let his story speak for itself—or, rather, his many stories: there is no personal intrusion of an author moved to fury by his outrageous subject. Fury is there, but it burns beneath the surface. Shall we say, as a novelist's fuel?
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