📖 Novel Of The Week - Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, where we remember all the victims that have been brought in concentrations/works camps by nazi' SS during World War II. 

Not only Jews, but also gipsie, mentally and physically disabled people, homosexual men and whoever wanted to express his/her free opinion.

I don't want to minimize or ridiculize that terrible period, but with this satirical Novel of the Week, I wanted to lighten a bit the atmosphere.

Have you ever thought about what would happen if historical figures like Churchill, Stalin, Mussolini or Hitler woke up "magically" in the in the third millennium? How would they managed technologies (computers, smartphones, ecc...) and social changes? 

Never gave a thought? Well, if you're doing it now, you'd probabily read Look Who's Back by Timus Vermes!
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Adolf Hitler (yes, THAT Adolf Hitler!) wakes up in a park in a suburban area outside Berlin. Disoriented, confused and mistaken for a  crazy man who claims to be the Führer, he keeps walking around trying to figure out which years is it and how he got there...his last memories are of he living in the bunker....

After a while, he finds a kind newsagent that thinks he's so sort of actor and gives him hospitality for a few nights. In the meantime, Adolf reads about what happened in the world during his 60 years of "absens": Cold War, UE, the single currency in all Europe, the economic crisis....
Of course, he didn't change and is planning to rebuild a new and more powerful  Reich....but, how?

The newsagent talks to two of his daily clients and Aldof is soon hired for a sort of "cabaret" show conducted by a tukish man, but soon he becomes more popular than his "host" and gets his on show. He truly belive he's doing propaganda for getting back in politics while the entire Germany thinks he's just a copycat who's using an historical figure to get famous, they don't undertstand that the Fuhrer is back...

👍👎My Thoughts

The book is written which such an humor that is impossible not to fall for. The narration is from Hitler's point of view, which is irreverent, anachronistic, politically incorrect and fanatical, exactly like the real Hitler was.
It's also a prospective view on today's issues, from the more useless ones to serious problems of governments. 

Little spoiler: it is not revealed who Hitler got back to us, but the problem is soon forgotten as there's Germany to save!

My vote: 8¾ /10


If you liked this novel, you might be interested in another famous "come back":
- The Second Coming by John Niven (about Jesus)
- The Childhood of Jesus by J.M. Coetzee  

Photo credits: goodread.com