The Seventh Cross, this great literary masterpiece, is a novel against dictatorship in general. Marcel Reich-Ranicki. This novel, which was first published in English in 1942 and shortly thereafter in German by the Mexican exile publisher El Libro Libre, made the author world-famous. It became a bestseller. The story gained popularity in 1942 through a comic adaptation and in the film by Austrian emigrant Fred Zinnemann in 1944 in the USA, even before the novel reached its readers in Germany. Of all Seghers' works, it is undoubtedly the most well-known. It employs a popular narrative pattern often used in trivial entertainment: a story of escape. Seven prisoners have escaped from the Westhofen concentration camp. They have redefined the power question that had long been decided against them. With their escape, they undermine their powerlessness and take action.