Zundel's Exit (First edition.)

Scrounged from his notebooks and hearsay, this is the story of a schoolteacher named Konrad Zndel: a philosopher, a wanna-be writer; scattered, self-conscious, glum, anxious, unlucky, discontent . . . At the end of his rope, he decides to flee his workaday life at all costs, only to find escape always a little beyond his reach.

First his tooth falls out in the sight of other travelers, then he finds a severed finger in a restroom on a train.

In fact, Zndel seems on the verge of falling to bits, as do his words, thoughts, wife, and worldwill there be anything left, and anyone to hold the pieces?

Zndels Exit is a Chaplinesque comedy of disintegration, never knowing if its coming or going.