The Seventh Cross

Seven prisoners escape from a Nazi concentration camp. The commandant has seven trees stripped to form crosses, one for each man, and sets out to recapture them all. The novel follows their flight across Germany as ordinary citizens face the choice of whether to help or look away.

Why Start Here

Because it is the rare political thriller that doubles as a profound moral document. Seghers wrote it in exile in Mexico between 1938 and 1939, years before the full horror of the Holocaust was widely known, and the novel served as one of the earliest fictional accounts to acknowledge the reality of concentration camps. It became a bestseller in America in 1942, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and was adapted into a Hollywood film starring Spencer Tracy.

What makes it endure is the way Seghers shifts focus from the escaping prisoners to the network of ordinary Germans around them: the doctor who treats a wound without asking questions, the farmer who leaves food at a fence, the old friend who pretends not to recognize a face. The novel asks a question that still matters: What would you do? And it answers honestly, showing cowardice, courage, and every shade between.

The NYRB Classics edition, translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo, is the first complete English translation, restoring passages cut from earlier editions.

What to Expect

A suspenseful, multi-perspective narrative that reads like a thriller but operates like a panoramic social novel. Seghers moves between characters and locations with cinematic precision. The prose is clear and urgent. At 416 pages it is her longest major work, but the pace never flags. Readers who enjoy novels that combine political urgency with human complexity will find this essential.