Go,Went, Gone slowly developing as both a political novel and novel of personal struggle

As noted yesterday, Jenny Erpenbeck's novel Go, Went, Gone (2015) focuses on a retired Berlin university professor, Richard, who becomes interested in the plight of African refugees squatting in Berlin and begins a project in which he interviews them about their lives and their experiences going into exile and settling, or trying to do so, in Germany. So on a primary level this novel is a polemic about the plight of the immigrant: Through Richard's interviews with several refugees we hear the horror stories of the violence and poverty that they fled and we hear the frustrating stories of their dealings w/ German bureaucracy as they try to get a foothold on the ladder toward a new life. Their fate and status depends greatly on whether they can prove to the authorities that they truly are political refugees who would face death if returned to their native lands. In one sense Germany is generous to these immigrants, providing them with housing and with a small stipend - but what they really want is work. They can't get work permits until they prove their refugee status, and if they don't do so they will get sent back to the land of their arrival in Europe - Italy - where there is no work - a Catch-22 for sure. On another level, though, this is a novel about the protagonist, Richard, and the changes in his life as he interviews and starts to befriend the immigrants. By profession, he's a philosopher/intellectual, so he naturally reflects on the strange aspects of the immigrant's plight and compares that with his own life story: He was a resident of East Berlin, and when the wall "fell" ca 1990 he suddenly found himself to be an "immigrant" in a new land, with much greater freedom of movement and greater political freedom than he'd ever experienced (he was born shortly after the WWII, in which his father fought in the German army). So he reflects on the nature of borders and boundaries - among other things noting that the borders in Africa were largely imposed by Colonial occupying nations, so when he asks an immigrant where he's from the answer is more likely to be a tribal or regional or language group rather than a western-imposed national boundary. That said, the novel moves at a deliberate pace, and, about 1/3 of the way through, Richard observes the mistreatment of and suspicions about the African immigrants and he befriends one in particular, whom he invites to his home, but he himself has not (yet) faced any crisis or moral dilemma or conflict w/ family, friends, or authorities.