Comedy in a Minor Key: A Novel

Keilson, Hans

ISBN 10: 0374126755 / ISBN 13: 9780374126759

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010

About this Item

First Edition, First Printing. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010. Octavo. Hardcover. Book is like new. Dust jacket is like new.

Seller Inventory # 507449

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Comedy in a Minor Key: A Novel
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0374126755
• ISBN 13: 9780374126759
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Like New
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

About this title

Synopsis

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, then must 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, penetrating, 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.”

Published to celebrate Keilson’s hundredth birthday, Comedy in a Minor Key—and The Death of the Adversary, reissued in paperback—will introduce American 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.

About the Author

Hans Keilson is the author of The Death of the Adversary. Born in Germany in 1909, he published his first novel in 1933. During World War II he joined the Dutch resistance. Later, as a psychotherapist, he pioneered the treatment of war trauma in children. In a 2010 New York Times review, Francine Prose called Keilson a “genius” and “one of the world’s very greatest writers.” He died in 2011 at the age of 101.