Comedy in a Minor Key
a novel
Hans Keilson (Translated by Damion Searls)
‘Comedy in a Minor Key is a masterpiece, and Hans Keilson is a genius … One of the world’s very greatest writers.’
Francine Prose, The New York Times
A penetrating study of ordinary people resisting the Nazi occupation — and, true to its title, a dark comedy of wartime manners — Comedy in a Minor Key tells the story of Wim and Marie, a Dutch couple who first hide a Jew they know as Nico, and must then dispose of his body when he dies of pneumonia.
This novella, first published in 1947 and now translated into English for the first time, shows Hans Keilson at his best: deeply ironic, sympathetic, and brilliantly modern — an heir to Joseph Roth and Franz Kafka. In 2008, when Keilson received Germany’s prestigious Welt Literature Prize, the citation praised his work for exploring ‘the destructive impulse at work in the twentieth century, down to its deepest psychological and spiritual ramifications’.
Comedy in a Minor Key introduces Australian readers to a forgotten classic author, a witness to World War II and a sophisticated storyteller whose books remain as fresh as when they first came to light.
Reviews
‘Is Keilsen a genius? Are his novels “masterpieces”? I doubt if we can know. But read them. They will enthrall you.’
Inga Clendinnen, The Monthly
‘Devastating … dreamlike … Nowhere in this novel do the words 'Nazi’ or ‘Hitler’ appear and the story works the way literature is supposed to in transforming specific real-life experience into something that has resonance and implications beyond its time and place. It’s also a powerfully political novella in its depiction of oppression and the abuse of power, the infliction of cruelty in the name of ideology and the sheer power of organised resistance.'
Sydney Morning Herald
» All reviews for this title‘[A] beautiful novella.’
Owen Richardson, The Age
