Hans Sahl, who had garnered attention in Berlin in 1925 with his striking film and theatre reviews, actually wanted to be an author. His diary, which he began when he was living in Prague, the first city he lived in during his exile, in the following years became a medium for stylistic experimentation. At first he wrote in short, sober sentences: “Last night I sat in the foyer of the Flora. Was hungry. No money in my pocket. I waited for someone who could lend me something but no one came. I was freezing”. By the time of his diary entries in France, it is obvious that he has a reading audience in mind when he describes the situation in which he finds himself. This becomes particularly evident in Book V, which begins with the voyage on the S. S. Guinee from Marseille to New York. He describes in the present tense the days at sea, his feelings as he flees his home continent to the new world, his impressions at the sight of the Manhattan skyline. Then he admits on page 7 that this authenticity has been faked and the text was written days later with the solid New York soil under foot: “And so, this narration can only be a thin tracing in pale contours, a summary in a hastily written manner, wrung from the first few weeks of my New York life”. In these New York scenes he is not the refugee who is regarding his fate with worry and confusion, but an indulgent admirer, enthusiastic for this city that arises auspiciously from out of the fog. A new chapter begins.