Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes review an oddly cosy resurrection of Hitler

This political satire was a thrillingly transgressive hit in Germany, but in Britain we've been making fun of Hitler for decades

In 2011, Adolf Hitler in full regalia wakes up on a patch of wasteland in Berlin. Having failed to find his bunker, he takes up temporary residence in a newspaper kiosk. There he is discovered by some TV producers, who take him to be a Hitler impersonator of rare method-acting genius. Soon he becomes the star of their satirical programme. His rants against foreigners and the welfare state are both consumed as comedy and secretly admired by a German public fed up with modern politics. Such is the set-up of Timur Vermes's satirical novel, translated by Jamie Bulloch, which has sold more than a million copies in Germany. But will it do what the Führer couldn't, and invade Britain too?

To this reader, the novel feels oddly cosy. No doubt it is much more thrillingly transgressive in Germany, where it remains a criminal offence to give a Nazi salute, as various characters do here with mounting enthusiasm. But Brits have been making fun of Hitler since the 1930s. And here he seems a cutely domesticated Adolf, one who could easily do a slightly amusing talking-head turn on Grumpy Old Men, complaining as he does about how young people don't look where they're going in the street because they are entranced by their smartphones.

Continue reading...