Look Who's Back

[Banana Banana]

I've just started reading this comic novel. It's based on the very silly premise that Adolf Hitler wakes up in Berlin in 2011, smelling of petrol but still aged 56.

It has just been translated into English from German and has a lot of references to current German culture. But the glossary makes a reasonable attempt to explain this.

I think it is a brilliant plot idea. I would like to see if the author carries it off as it is difficult to see where it can end.

[G-Man]

Look Who's Back

I've read the German original, and rather liked it. I feared the story would go OTT, but it stops short of it.

I wonder how it works in English. Some cultural references cannot be explained in glossaries, nor can that awful Berlin accent of Hitler's secretary, so well caught in the book, be rendered in English.

The biggest challenge would be to capture Hitler's archaic pattern of speech. Given that the whole thing is written in Hitler's voice, the archaic word choices, his old-fashioned politeness, and his rants are central to the book. Timur Vermes did a fantastic job with that.

There are some fantastic gags as well. Early on there's one involving a replica football shirt.

A critic for the Süddeutsche Zeitung warned that after a whole the reader no longer laughs at Hitler but with Hitler. That wasn't my experience of the book. I rather got out of it what Vermes tries to get across: a Hitler doesn't seduce the people with the big ideas, but with by addressing the small, daily complaints they have: the dogshit on pavements and the mindless grafitti on public buildings.

[Sam]

Look Who's Back

One of the Amazon reviews for it reads;

Does not make any sense whatsoever as bear
any relation to what happened after the war,and is boring in its writing

Now, aside from the fact that his syntax, erm, doesn't make any sense whatsoever (awkward...), is this reviewer really marking down a book about Hitler coming back to life because it bears no relation to actual events?

Anyway, I might give it a go. Interesting premise.