Book review: Look Who's Back, by Timur Vermes

by Timur Vermes
MacLehose Press
2 stars
David Bartram

It is certainly one of the more bizarre premises in recent contemporary fiction. It's Berlin in the year 2011, and Adolf Hitler wakes to find himself lying on a floor, initially unaware that he was somehow brought back to life and sent several decades forward in time.

After finding his bearings, he soon makes a friend at a nearby newspaper kiosk and before long is starring on television, with much of Germany enthralled by what they believe is a comedy actor portraying the Führer.

Timur Vermes' satire of modern German society has been translated into English after gaining huge success in his homeland, where the novel has sold more than one million copies.

Of course, the obvious question is whether Hitler is appropriate fodder for a comic novel.

Vermes' Hitler isn't a particularly dislikeable figure, and the reader is directed to almost pity him. His racist rants are so out of context that they come across as irrelevant rather than offensive. On other occasions, the dictator is witty and rather charming.

Vermes has argued that such a portrayal is important, and that writing Hitler off as a unique monster is to blind ourselves to the social and political failings that could put a similar figure in power again.