In 1935 Hermann Hesse called Joachim Maass one of the most talented among the younger generation of German novelists. Maass belongs to the generation of exile authors who left Germany in opposition to the Nazi regime. Unlike Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, who were already well-established authors at the time of their emigration, Maass was just emerging as a prose writer when he decided to leave for the United States. After an unsuccessful homecoming in the early 1950s, he returned to Germany only for brief visits.

The third and youngest son of a well-to-do merchant family-his brother Edgar became a well-known historical novelist-Maass attended a private preparatory school in Hamburg. In 1920, abandoning his plans to study law, he reluctantly became an apprentice with his father's business firm, which sent him to Portugal in 1922. There he discovered his love for literature and began writing lyric poetry, much of which remained...