Getting out of Europe is the only thing on Volker’s mind when he buys a one-way ticket to Africa. The 24-hour layover is less than ideal.

Stuck in Charles de Gaulle airport, Volker waits, thinks, and observes. Around him, a strange cast of actors moves across the stage: a porn star, a child trafficker, a terrorist with dwarfism, a trans woman, a pedophile, a disgraced professor. As he walks the terminal, Volker contemplates their fates, his own, and the fate of the lover he left behind.

Innovative and subversive, rich with humor and wit, Will, the Passenger Delaying Flight flips the novel form inside out to expose the messy, dreamlike quality of transient spaces—and to memorialize with awe and reverence the people who move us and move past us with nothing but a glance.

Getting out of Europe is the only thing on Volker’s mind when he buys a one-way ticket to Africa. The 24-hour layover is less than ideal.

Stuck in Charles de Gaulle airport, Volker waits, thinks, and observes. Around him, a strange cast of actors moves across the stage: a porn star, a child trafficker, a terrorist with dwarfism, a trans woman, a pedophile, a disgraced professor. As he walks the terminal, Volker contemplates their fates, his own, and the fate of the lover he left behind.

Innovative and subversive, rich with humor and wit, Will, the Passenger Delaying Flight flips the novel form inside out to expose the messy, dreamlike quality of transient spaces—and to memorialize with awe and reverence the people who move us and move past us with nothing but a glance.