A Sea Change

'This is the story of how I became a man ...' In May 1939, the SS St. Louis left Hamburg for Havana, carrying almost a thousand refugees from Hitler's Germany. Over the following weeks, the ship criss-crossed the ocean, buffeted alternately by hope and disappointment, as it sought asylum in a friendly port and war drew inexorably closer. Based on actual events, Michael Arditti's enthralling new novel is the memoir of one of the passengers, fifteen-year-old Karl, heir to a department store fortun