The dark humor of Seghers's Transit, and a nod to Sartre

As noted in previous posts, Anna Seghers's 1951 novel, Transit, may appear at first as a novel of adventure, following the fortunes of a narrator racing to the Mediterranean coast of France to evade possible capture and deportation (or worse) by German troops. And the first section is "adventurous," but then the narrator reaches Marseille and determines that he wants to stay there. Most of the novel, then, involves his struggle to get his residency permit and his interactions w/ many of the thousands of refugees who have crowded into the city, each seeking an exit visa and the necessary papers (transit visas etc.) to emigrate to America (not just the U.S. but also Cuba, Mexico - any country that will accept them). The novel gradually becomes a dark comedy, as the various characters run through  against the bureaucratic maze and are repeatedly denied the needed documents. Meanwhile, the narrator falls in love w/ a fellow-German, Marie - w/ the complication that he is travelling w/ the papers of her late husband, an author who died in Paris (unbeknownst to Marie, his estranged wife, who has fallen in love w/ a doctor who is trying to get to Mexico). Whew. But parsing the plot is not the point - the novel is not about the plot details but about the sense of life in a community of refugees escaping war; as such, it has resonance today of course, as the mood in the community must be similar to the mood in a community of those in flight from war in the Mideast or of terrorism in Central America - waiting for papers, families divided, struggling w/ little money, considering false documents and any other means of attaining passage to safety. The mood also reminds me of Sartre's No Exit, although in this case a cast of many and not just 3 or 4?) - Seghers is writing of course about a specific period in history but also about  universal mood of capture and suffocation (though she would not endorse the "Hell is other people" doctrine of Sartre). There are also some really funny moments and lines, such as the narrator, yearning to bring Marie to safety, opines that he would be able to prevent her from ever getting involved w/ someone like him. Ha!