A man wakes up one morning as a passenger on a steamer populated by strange fellow travelers. Intuitively, he feels that the ship he is on is moving in the wrong direction. Only the captain can change the course of this peculiar vessel, but he is nowhere to be found. As the ship drifts out to open sea, the passenger wanders through the labyrinthine interior of the steamer, searching for the captain and the meaning of his journey. Some features that characterize Martin tom Dieck's work can also be found here: the motif of seafaring combined with the search for meaning, in a story that is told with both concentration and great ease. "The Innocent Passenger," first published in a small edition in 1993 and soon sold out, was awarded the Max and Moritz Prize the following year.