Comedy in a Minor Key

A Novel

By: Hans Keilson, Damion Searls - translator

Narrated by: James Clamp

"For busy, harried or distractible readers who have the time and energy only to skim the opening paragraph of a review, I'll say this as quickly and clearly as possible: The Death of the Adversary and Comedy in a Minor Key are masterpieces, and Hans Keilson is a genius..." —Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review

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 listeners 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.

©1947 Hans Keilson, Translation copyright 2010 by Damion Searls (P)2010 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“For busy, harried or distractible readers who have the time and energy only to skim the opening paragraph of a review, I'll say this as quickly and clearly as possible: The Death of the Adversary and Comedy in a Minor Key are masterpieces, and Hans Keilson is a genius . . . Although the novels are quite different, both are set in Nazi-occupied Europe and display their author's eye for perfectly illustrative yet wholly unexpected incident and detail, as well as his talent for storytelling and his extraordinarily subtle and penetrating understanding of human nature. But perhaps the most distinctive aspect they share is the formal daring of the relationship between subject matter and tone. Rarely has a finer, more closely focused lens been used to study such a broad and brutal panorama, mimetically conveying a failure to come to grips with reality by refusing to call that reality by its proper name . . . Rarely have such harrowing narratives been related with such wry, off-kilter humor, and in so quiet a whisper. Read these books and join me in adding him to the list, which each of us must compose on our own, of the world's very greatest writers.” —Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review

“This first-ever English translation of Keilson's gripping 1947 novel about a Dutch couple hiding a Jewish perfume merchant in their home during WWII marks a welcome reintroduction to the author's unfortunately obscure oeuvre . . . Beautifully nuanced and moving, Keilson's tale probes the more concealed, subtle forces that annihilate the human spirit.” —Publishers Weekly

“A brisk, engaging work of Holocaust literature that deserves to be better known.” —Brendan Driscoll, Booklist

HIDDEN LIVING

Hans Keilson writes a story about hidden living in Comedy in a minor Key. The horror, the horror… from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness creeps into your mind when listening to Keilson’s story of a German Jew that is hidden by a young married couple in Nazi Germany.

History and fiction meet in Keilson’s story. Keilson is long gone and little remembered but this story places you in a small two-story house, in an upstairs bedroom with the shades drawn, in a grim scene of anxiety and despair. James Clamp has a perfectly accented voice for this tale of gloom because he does not over dramatize Keilson’s words but gives them a solemn and poignant believability.

Aside from the horror of the death of innocence, the story has a kind of happy ending with the married couple returning to their home to begin again. One wonders if beginning again means they will continue to be protectors of the innocent; to be human in a culture that slips into genocide, destruction, and hate.

This is a short book, more of a novella, but it tells a big story that resonates in our own history and the history of all humanity.

Ironic and Tragic

How many stories have I read in my life about good, well-meaning people who helped Jews hide during WW2? An innumerable amount! and yet, I never thought about what could or would happen if one of them died while hidden! What do you do? How do you get rid of the body in secret? Is it dangerous? I NEVER considered any of this, yet it must have happened countless times!

I am glad I came across this short story; it was a very interesting (albeit ironically tragic) book.

This was so interesting

The subject of the the Jews and WW2 is not easy to handle lightly. Yet I learned so much about people and their lives, at that time, without the sick feeling I usually get when reading about the Holocaust.