During his exile in America, Hans Natonek first published some smaller works in 1941. Letzter Tag in Europa and Der erste Tag were published by the Aufbau publishing house. But their collaboration was of short duration. Natonek broke off contact with the émigré community; he wanted to begin afresh and leave Europe behind.

1943 saw the publication of his autobiography In search of myself,  his only book publication during his American exile, although he switched to writing in English in the 1940s. The numerous novels he wrote in English found no publishers. No longer able to live from his writing, he was financially dependent on his third wife. Listed here is but a fraction of his unpublished material. Topping the list is the novel Yesterday is Tomorrow.

Due to his lack of success in the US, in the 1950s he questioned whether he had been too quick to abandon the German language and the German book market. In his essay Between Two Languages (1953), he examined the switch from one language to another and the problems associated with it. The text is one of the few journalistic works he published during his exile in the US.

At the end of the 1950s, Natonek's writing changed radically once again; he returned to the literary form and now mainly wrote poetry. He published his poems in journals and newspapers and experienced a final, late flourish of success – in the US as well as in Germany. A publisher could not be found for the collected works, however.