Look Who's Back

Is it morally acceptable to feature Hitler as the rather likeable protagonist of a comic novel? Is it in good taste to turn a mass murderer into a figure of fun? These questions naturally come to mind when faced with Timur Vermes's first novel. The premise is simple - Hitler inexplicably wakes up in modern day Berlin and, mistaken for an uncannily brilliant method actor, lands a programme on national tv. Much of the resulting humour is, predictably, based on the reverse anachronisms raised by the Rip-van-Winkle situation. Hitler is astounded by the technological advances such as the "mouse device", the "internetwork" and the "Vikipedia", which he believes is named after the "intrepid explorer Teutons of old". He is flummoxed by the show more sight of "madwomen" walking their dogs and cleaning up after them,cannot understand why his goth scretary does not wear wholesome, colourful clothing and is impressed that Herr Starbuck has apparently taken over all the coffee houses in Berlin.

Vermes makes the most out of these scenes, but he is most incisive when he uses his character to satirize modern-day society, politics and media. On the whole, an entertaining and occasionally thought-provoking read. What is pleasantly surprising is that although the humour is probably quite culture and language-specific, the English translation is zesty, flowing and idiomatic. Kudos to Jamie Bulloch for this. show less

This is so funny. It make me repeatedly flap about on the sofa with no more than minimal control over my own body while my cat looked on in astonishment. I could endlessly quote it to you, but this review would end up being 375 pages long and I’d get done for copyright infringement.

The initial focus of the satire is Adolf Hitler. To briefly summarise, the novel is narrated by Hitler, who magically wakes up in 2011. Everyone takes him to be a method acting impersonator and takes the terrible things he says as jokes. Before long, he has a foothold in the media. As the reader, we can see what’s going on inside his head. We can see a man ignorant and confused who struggles with normal human interaction. He’s not a supernatural demon, show more but a man who has done terrible things. This is the dark side of the satire, the true target, that I found not so much funny as frightening. The true target is us. I suppose we all have ignorances and confusions about things. I certainly do. Granted, I’ve not killed six million Jews, but the book suggests the disturbing idea that my mistakes and Hitler’s grave crimes flow from the same causes and that Hitler’s behaviour does not require any supernatural force of evil to account for it. show less

This novel posits the resurrection of Reichsfuhrer Adolf Hitler, who, after a brief period of adaptation to his reduced circumstances, catches a wave of internet and TV popularity as a hilarious Hitler imitator in today's Germany. When this book is funny, it is extremely funny; the first third of the book, a variant of the Rip Van Winkle theme of a long-absent old man attempting to decipher the modern world, is a laff-riot, poking fun at such modern day oddities as e-mail addresses and the computer mouse. Unfortunately, after that, the book increasingly becomes a vehicle for the author's conjectures about what Hitler would think about contemporary politics and diplomacy. In other words, it's a lot like reading Mein Kampf, since the show more author is a talented mimic of Hitler's bombast, and this imagined Mein Kampf is pretty much like reading the tiresome original. Since many people get extremely angry with comical Hitlers and won't like even the first part of the book, this theme will probably be even less acceptable; I certainly found it all somewhere between puzzling and dismaying. And, really, the funny parts wouldn't be nearly as funny with any other world leader of the period as the protagonist; an American novelist tried approximately the same schtick with Wm. Howard Taft a few years ago, with decidedly mixed results. show less

Víceméně vystavěno kolem Poeova zákona, kdy platí, že fanatismus může být bez znalosti kontextu k nerozeznání od své parodie - čerstvě probuzený Hitler se stává populárním bavičem a získává si tak vliv, protože si všichni myslí, že ironizuje skutečného Hitlera. Jediný, kdo ví, že Hitler je opravdu Hitlerem, je pak čtenář, který je ale zase vystaven jinému problému - podvědomá touha sympatizovat s hlavním (anti)hrdinou jakéhokoli příběhu je tu konfrontována s tím, že Hitler je pořád stejný parchant, jako vždycky. Typově je vlastně srovnatelný s postavami různých protivných dědků, kteří mají neomalené (dneska se říkává nekorektní) názory, ale zároveň nějaký osobní show more šarm a můžou všelijak "nastavovat zrcadla". Jenomže tohle není Jack Nicholson v Lepší už to nebude nebo děda Simpson. Tohle je Hitler, který například rozhodně nechová žádné pochybnosti o funkci a zdůvodnění holocaustu. Na mysl se pak vkládá otázka, zda takový ten lehce buranský strýc ob tři kolena nebo kolega z práce, co posledně vyprávěl, jak si za to "cigoši můžou", ale přitom je jinak docela vtipný a dá se s ním jít na pivo, když nepřijde řeč na politiku, vlastně taky není prostě... Hitler.

Na konci jsem čekal ještě trošku větší kopnutí čtenářstva do koulí, například tím, že Hitler překvapivě rozmrdá život někomu, kdo mu do té doby pomáhal, ale k ničemu takovému vlastně nedošlo, byť je zřejmé, že k tomu vývoj asi spěje. Jen se asi průšvih neomezí na tak malý počet osob. Zbývá domýšlet, taky dobrý. show less

The premise of the novel is that Adolf Hitler unaccountably finds himself alive and well and in the Berlin of 2011. His uniform smells of petrol, he has a headache, and the last thing he can remember is sitting on a couch in the bunker with Eva. Obviously there must be a reason why he's there: it doesn't take him long to work out that the German nation is in a mess and needs a strong and capable leader to bring it back onto the right path. And he soon finds the way to get his message out to the German people when he gets a place on TV as a Hitler-impersonator (what else?) on a satirical comedy show.

The real strength of the book is the daring idea of using Hitler as first-person narrator. Vermes very effectively captures the show more characteristic style of Hitler's rhetoric - easy to imitate for a sentence or two, but it's quite an achievement to do it for a whole book without becoming repetitive. I didn't detect any obvious wrong notes: Vermes has clearly done his research quite thoroughly. (The third variation on "Seit 5:45 Uhr wird jetzt zurückgeschossen!" was probably one too many, however...)

Hitler always remains in character, taking himself entirely seriously, continuing to believe in his deluded ideas, and never doubting for a second that he has always done the right thing. Vermes has to make sure that the reader is aware of the enormity of the moral split that is going on here: Hitler presents himself as the war veteran, the simple man of the people, the war leader carrying the responsibilities for his people, and the cuddly Onkel Wolf who liked to joke around with his secretaries and eat cream cakes, but we're not allowed to forget what else he presided over. Sometimes this shift works and sometimes it doesn't.

The idea of making Hitler into a comedian is also clever: Vermes is making the (perhaps not entirely original) point that we live in a world where you get more attention as a clown than you do as a politician, and reinforcing it with the paradox that in modern Germany, dressing up as Hitler would give you the freedom to say things that would otherwise be totally unacceptable. It's also interesting how Vermes cleverly manages the humour: Hitler, even though he's a professional comedian, never says anything that's obviously calculated to be funny, but as narrator he is aware that his comments (which are often extremely funny because of the context) make people laugh, and this doesn't bother him. If people are laughing at what he says, it means that they are listening to him. It's noticeable that Vermes doesn't give Hitler a new political programme for the 21st century. He's against a lot of the things he sees around him, but we're never told what he's for, other than restoring Germany's borders to what they were.

Some of the other jokes in the book are a bit more obvious: there's a certain amount of rather predictable Rip-van-Winkle stuff about Hitler discovering the oddities of the modern world, and there are a lot of in-jokes about German newspapers, politicians, and TV shows (some of which I certainly missed). Not everything was at the same high level of comedy as Hitler's wildly inappropriate speeches, but I did laugh a great deal at this book. I didn't feel very comfortable about finding it so funny, though!

It's notable that reviews of this book outside Germany tend to be rather lukewarm. I suspect that it loses a lot of its transgressive effect in translation (in Germany, it's still problematic to talk about Hitler in any context other than a strictly didactic one; English readers probably think about Mel Brooks or the Monty Python Minehead by-election sketch). Moreover, even a very good translation probably wouldn't capture the dangerous and disturbing resonance that the Hitler rhetorical style has in German. show less

"'We're not getting anywhere here,' she said indignantly. 'Look, I'm not dead, am I?'
'You may be sorry to hear this,' I said, 'but nor am I.'" (pg. 231)

Let's get the usual stuff out of the way first, because – as with all satire – the message is the most important thing and needs discussing in more depth. Look Who's Back is funny, articulate and, whilst possessing little in the way of plot, engrossing for its entire length. Much of the regular humour – to be distinguished from the black humour evident in the satirical elements – comes from classic 'fish out of water' experiences as Hitler interacts with the modern world and its peculiarities. Vermes writes well (and, as always, kudos should also go to the translator – in this show more case, Jamie Bulloch) and whilst the book gradually lost a bit of steam it still crossed the finish line with energy to spare. The ending felt a bit rushed, but how do you end a story like this? Do the usual story elements – plot, character, setting – even matter when a book has such an overt and compelling message?

Well, I say 'overt'. There is always the danger in satire that people will take you seriously and whilst that is always a fault in the reader than in the book itself, Vermes does sail dangerously close to the wind. The concept of Look Who's Back is that Adolf Hitler (does he need an introduction?) wakes up in the present day – 2011 – where people are amused by what they see as a stand-up comedian who refuses to break character. Hitler becomes more popular – his strain of conservative populist and political opportunism striking as much of a chord today as it did back in the 1930s – until, before you know it, people are saying, you know, actually, 'it wasn't all bad' (pg. 365).

Vermes' aim here, of course, is not to advocate National Socialism but to remind us of the oft-forgotten lesson that the rise of Hitler wasn't a historical or cultural aberration. Hitler was liked by the German people and his government was democratically elected. When Vermes' Hitler caustically states that "even back then, passing off a gas chamber as a shower room was not exactly the height of subtlety" (pg. 297), he is exposing the myth that ordinary Germans were blameless in the Nazi years. Nazism wasn't an aberration or a fluke; it built on the prejudices and insecurities of the ordinary German people to seize power. And people still have prejudices and insecurities nowadays, by the bucketload. The Nazis weren't 'inhuman' (strictly speaking) or 'demons': they were flesh and blood and, because of this, there are potential Hitlers and Himmlers and Heydrichs out there still. And, even more disconcertingly, there are plenty of ordinary people out there quite willing to 'sieg heil' in the right (or wrong) circumstances, and most of them don't do us the courtesy of shaving their heads and getting swastika tattoos. Many are like you and me. Indeed, you and I could, in the circumstances, become two of them.

The allusions to this theme will be obvious to the attentive reader, and they are so numerous that to give examples would be to all but reproduce large swathes of the book. At the very least, consider the quote with which I opened this review. When Hitler says he is not dead, there is a double meaning (Vermes is fond of these). Not only is he not dead, but the ideologies, prejudices and basic human frailties which propelled him to power are not dead either. Like all good satirists, Vermes exposes our complacency.

However, as is often the case with satire, Vermes' message can be so subtle or disguised or seemingly straight-faced that it might backfire. In giving us Hitler's thoughts on a number of contemporary issues – a peculiar but believable mix of the conservative and the progressive – Vermes is fulfilling his satirical remit of showing us that Hitler was a real person and not a cartoonish demon, but in doing so he also makes Hitler – whisper it – in some ways likeable or at least agreeable. Hitler's thoughts on modern celebrity and mass media, or politics, or the state of society, may well chime with the reader's own opinions. There is the very real danger at times that Look Who's Back could be seen, in some quarters, as a rehabilitation of the man.

In a time of rising anti-Semitism in the West, Vermes' book is paradoxically both welcome and unwelcome. In showing Hitler as human rather than aberration, Vermes is performing the valuable service of warning against such divisive and opportunistic populism. Yet in an age where people vote for personable politicians they feel they could share a beer with, humanising Hitler also runs the risk of making his views seem palatable, and the use of humour risks trivialising his crimes. But such is the double-edge of satire. For my part, I wholeheartedly understood Vermes' intention. In reading Look Who's Back, you feel uncomfortable that you are agreeing with Hitler – even if on trivial stuff. Then you realise this is exactly how a real Hitler would get people onside. Then you realise this is partly why we need to work so diligently and conscientiously at improving our own society and remedying its injustices: so that we are less susceptible to being manipulated in such a way. With all the entailing consequences.

Update (4th May): Having since watched the excellent German film adaptation of Look Who's Back, I love it even more. Whilst providing less belly-laughs than the book, it nevertheless presents the central message much more emphatically; the weakest part of the book (its ending) becomes the strongest part of the film. It's rare to find a film adaptation which captures so perfectly both the essence and the particulars of the book it's based on. A good show all round. show less

Hilarious and/or horrifying. Given recent events, readers looking for escapism might want to avoid this book, which sees a nation fall in love with a TV personality who also happens to be a far-Right fanatic. Imagine Network, but with Hitler instead of Peter Finch. Every goose step of the novel is planned so meticulously, and the plot unfurls so plausibly, that you're completely wrapped up in the fantasy/nightmare - and Vermes even manages to make our Fuhrer sympathetic.