“Evoking both Kafka and Conrad, Unger’s character study of a broken man in a culture broken by a ravenous corporation makes compelling reading.”
—Booklist

“Unger does a great job with fish-out-of-water situations, as [protagonist] Samuel’s travails—sometimes Kafkaesque, sometimes Laurel and Hardy—nicely pit his timidity against his growing desperation.”
—Publishers Weekly

“David Unger’s tale utterly seduces with its mix of the exotic and the familiar.”
—Toronto Star

“Unger’s rendering of human contradiction is masterful, for in the space of Samuel’s four days of awe, Unger reveals life’s slippery terms of engagement in all their complexity with a clarity that still contains compassion . . . We can be grateful for the message of this wondrous book: despite our fears, even the least heroic among us can find the will to go forward.”
—Literature and Arts of the Americas

“David Unger spins a fascinating tale of weird redemption in The Price of Escape, leading us on a tense journey from 1938 Nazi Germany all the way to Guatemala. The sinister United Fruit Company casts a giant shadow over this vividly rendered landscape, devouring everyone and everything in its path. Unger has created a compelling protagonist in the flawed and anguished Samuel Berkow, a man on the run from his own demons and the terrible forces of history.”
—Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dream Jungle

“The Price of Escape is a supremely well-crafted emotional and historical tale of a lonely Jewish man’s flight from Nazi Germany to Guatemala, a supposed tropical paradise that is also cursed, and where he must carve out a new life.”
—Francisco Goldman, author of The Art of Political Murder

“The Price of Escape is a fresh, provocative, and deeply moving historical novel that explores the fate of a young Jewish man who narrowly escapes Nazi Germany, only to find himself ensnared in the squalid underbelly of a Guatemalan port town. In the unusually compelling character of Samuel Berkow, author David Unger has authentically captured the profound sense of displacement—physical, emotional and spiritual—that all of the dispossessed must face.”
—T Cooper, author of Lipshitz Six, or Two Angry Blondes and The Beaufort Diaries