Look Who’s Back
PUBLISHED ON MAY 4, 2014 12:21 AM
By Timur Vermes
MacLehose Press/Paperback/375 pages/ $24.95/Books Kinokuniya/***1/2
It should be the stuff of nightmares.
Adolf Hitler wakes up from the dead on one bright summer day in Berlin in 2011. He is decked in full regalia, sans swastika, and not a day older than when he took his own life towards the end of World War II - or rather, a "withdrawal from active politics", as the character would have you believe.
The premise will raise a few eyebrows, but is the debut author - formerly a journalist and a ghost-writer - merely capitalising on shock value? After all, the Nazi leader remains a taboo subject, nearly 70 years after the end of World War II. A German furniture store chain had to recently apologise after it inadvertently sold mugs bearing a faded imprint of a Hitler portrait.
So it is somewhat surprising that 1.5 million Germans have lapped up the native language version of the novel which was published in 2012 and has now been translated into English by Jamie Bulloch.
The novel brings Hitler to the heart of contemporary democratic contradictions - with the dictator, a controversial subject whom Timur Vermes parodies into what the marketing slogan terms as a "merciless satire". Some will inevitably beg to differ, calling it bad taste.
Hitler somehow finds a new calling as a stand-up comedian. He thrills television audiences and media corporation honchos alike with "method acting" to the point of winning comedy awards.
Like a time traveller lost in the maze of modern day proclivities, he rants against his Fatherland, now filled with immigrants and led by a female chancellor. He makes a mockery of technology, calling Wikipedia a project which brought him "to the verge of tears" for the communal sharing of ideas for the "greater good". He goes around giving the Nazi salute, even as his boss cautions him that "the Jews are no laughing matter".
The book is laced with Vermes' subversive wit and he ought to have hit a home run with this book. But the style occasionally takes a turgid and meandering turn - which could well be an attempt to imitate Hitler's writing.
Even then, it feels that this satire was not quite as merciless or serious about taking the mickey out of the Fuhrer's second coming, as it could - or is it should? - have been.
If you like this, read: Ruth Maier's Diary: A Jewish Girl's Life In Nazi Europe by Ruth Maier (2010, $28.90, Books Kinokuniya). After the guilty pleasure of Vermes' Look Who's Back, this heart-wrenching book, also translated by Bulloch, will bring readers down to earth.
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