Look Who's Back

May 15, 2015

In the summer of 2011, Adolf Hitler--yes, the real one--suddenly wakes up in a vacant lot in Berlin and sets about attempting to restore the Third Reich. That's the somewhat implausible and rather transgressive premise of this wickedly satiric first novel. Homeless and penniless, he's taken in by a newspaper vendor with media connections who promises to help him get back on his feet. Hitler's "act" wins over the television executives who frequent the kiosk, and he soon is spouting Nazi dogma on a television comedy show, where he's regarded as a Hitler impersonator and knowingly ironic political comic, something like a German version of Stephen Colbert's right-wing pundit. Hitler is, of course, deadly serious, and the dissonance between his earnest bigotry and the vacuousness of our media-soaked age is the comic grist that propels the novel toward its truly ironic conclusion. VERDICT While German journalist Vermes has a good deal to say about the state of contemporary Germany, his reach here is more universal, as he's crafted a sardonic send-up of a media and a world where the message doesn't matter so long as your ratings are high and your videos go viral on YouTube.--Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

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