Before the outbreak of the Second World War, German political emigrant Steiner and the Jewish students Ludwig Kern and Ruth Holland wander through Europe without papers. Between deportation and detention, they are confronted with a pitiless bureaucracy in every country they go: Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland and France. Ultimately, after the war, Steiner returns to Germany to see his dying wife one last time. He knows that he won't survive this last visit. In hospital, he drags his former Nazi tormentor with him to death. The novel asks: is there revenge and redemption? How can the individual attain justice in a lawless world and a corrupt system?