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Look Who's Back Hardcover – August 11, 2015
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"Desperately funny . . . An ingenious comedy of errors." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"Satire at its best." --Newsweek
"Thrillingly transgressive." --The Guardian
A NEW YORK TIMES SUMMER READING PICK
In this record-breaking bestseller, Timur Vermes imagines what would happen if Adolf Hilter reawakened in present-day Germany: YouTube stardom.
Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of open ground, alive and well. It's the summer of 2011 and things have changed--no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognizes his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman.
People certainly recognize him--as a flawless impersonator who refuses to break character. The unthinkable happens, and the ranting Hitler goes viral, becomes a YouTube star, gets his own TV show, and people begin to listen. But the Fuhrer has another program with even greater ambition in mind--to set the country he finds in shambles back to rights.
With daring humor, Look Who's Back is a perceptive study of the cult of personality and of how individuals rise to fame and power in spite of what they preach.
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherMacLehose Press
- Publication dateAugust 11, 2015
- Dimensions6.38 x 1.13 x 9.25 inches
- ISBN-101623653339
- ISBN-13978-1623653330
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Editorial Reviews
Review
An Independent Best Books of the Year selection
A New York Times Summer Reading Pick
"You know his name. You know his face. You know his hair and mustache, which are caricatured with sharp, witty minimalism on the cover of Look Who's Back, in which a baffled Adolf Hitler is returned to the even more baffled German people. Now you'll also know Timur Vermes, whose debut novel has created a sensation in Germany. [Look Who's Back] is desperately funny . . . Mr. Vermes has created an ingenious comedy of errors in which the jokes are either on Hitler's misapprehensions about the modern world or the modern world's refusal to take him at face value . . . Read this book."―Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"Very funny . . . The frisson of reading Look Who's Back comes from its seamless transition from Borscht Belt one-liners to disturbing invocations of the legacies of Nazi rule. Mr. Vermes gives us a bracingly double-sided Hitler-the arresting public speaker and astute negotiator who loves dogs and small children, and also the fanatical champion of political violence, global tyranny and ethnic cleansing . . . Translator Jamie Bulloch helps by providing a glossary at the close of the book, but what people will remember is his perfect rendering of the ridiculously orotund, yet oddly compelling, manner of Hitler's speechifying."―Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
"We're startled into a genuine laugh . . . Vermes plays all of this straight, or at least deadpan. He is not a historian, but his presentation of the minutiae of Hitler's life amounts to an impressive feat of historical research . . . the ventriloquism here is impressive . . . The most striking and provocative feature of the narrative, in fact, is not the decision to resurrect Hitler but the choice to use him as a first-person narrator - to risk telling us more about Hitler than could be known, in Forster's phrase.―Daniel Torday, The New York Times
"Look Who's Back is Hitler satire at its best . . . while there has been much debate over whether or why it's appropriate to laugh at Vermes's relentless Hitler satire, this well-researched and uproariously cringe-worthy book makes it hard not to . . . It is ultimately a sort of commentary on Hitler's first ascent to power-on the point at which a charismatic man starts being taken seriously, and what that transition entails . . . laugh-out-loud funny."―Kira Bindrim, Newsweek
"A hilarious, yet poignant look at today's world through the eyes of one of its most horrific villains . . . the political and social satires translate will through the language barrier as the translator, Jamie Bulloch, did a fantastic job in the writing."―Seattle Post Intelligencer
"Look Who's Back offers searing cultural and political commentary in the guise of a wildly entertaining story."―Paste Magazine
"[A] wickedly satiric first novel . . . Hitler is, of course, deadly serious, and the dissonance between his earnest bigotry and the vacuousness of our media-soaked age is the comic grist that propels the novel toward its truly ironic conclusion. While German journalist Vermes has a good deal to say about the state of contemporary Germany, his reach here is more universal, as he's crafted a sardonic send-up of a media and a world where the message doesn't matter so long as your ratings are high and your videos go viral on YouTube."―Library Journal
"Thrillingly transgressive."―The Guardian
"The joke is not on the reanimated Fuhrer, spouting predictably on immigrant and Jews, but on the ironic flippancy of the YouTube generation . . . rollickingly enjoyable."―Angel Gurria-Quintana, The Financial Times
"It is 2011 and Hitler is back and going viral in a darkly entertaining satire."―The Sunday Times
"Hilarious . . . The appeal of the story is our our own reaction to a monster's view of how we live today. And being chilled by our own empathy with his disgust toward the media, politicians, government and, of course, technology . . .Vermes could have made the star of this book anyone from history. He's really telling us about ourselves."―Esther Cepeda, Washington Postsyndicated columnist
"For Vermes's novel is not so much a satire on Third Reich revisionism and nostalgia--although that plays its part--as on the blank ironies of amoral and fad-crazy multi-platform media. For parallels, think Sacha Baron Cohen and Chris Morris. The undead Fuhrer gets his first big break on a show hosted by a Turkish-origin comedian called Ali Gagmez."
―Bolyd Tonkin, The Independent
"Packed with wry, close-to-the-knuckle hilarity, and builds to a gloriously ironic conclusion."―Mail on Sunday
"Both funny and frightening, this is a subtle, historical study of the commanding nature of a fanatical demagogue, as well as a savage critique of contemporary western culture . . . a powerful and important book."―Sue Gaisford, The Independent on Sunday
"Very funny"―Financial Times
"What would happen if Adolf Hitler woke up in modern-day Berlin? In a bestselling satirical novel, he'd end up a TV comedy star . . . [Look Who's Back] has unsurprisingly sparked debate in a country that has grappled for decades with Hitler's unconscionable legacy."―Time
About the Author
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR: Jamie Bulloch's translations include Ruth Maier's Diary, Portrait of a Mother as a Young Women by F. C. Delius, and novels by Paulus Hochgatterer and Daniel Glattauer.
Product details
- Publisher : MacLehose Press (August 11, 2015)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1623653339
- ISBN-13 : 978-1623653330
- Item Weight : 1.1 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.38 x 1.13 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #408,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,069 in Political Fiction (Books)
- #2,444 in Fiction Satire
- #21,800 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Timur Vermes was born in Nuremberg in 1967, the son of a German mother and a Hungarian father who fled Hungary in 1956. He studied history and politics and went on to become a journalist. He has written for various newspapers and magazines, and has ghostwritten several books since 2007. This is his first novel, and is currently being made into a film by Mythos in a co-production with Constantin Film.
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All of which is to say, writing about Hitler is dangerous. It can easily be misinterpreted or fall flat. But, in my view, Vermes has hit a satirical home run with this book. The premise is weirdly simple. Hitler is magically transported from 1945 and dropped alone into 21st Century Berlin. (He’s disturbed by the fact that his head hurts and his clothes smell like gasoline, which was a nice touch.) He quickly starts spouting his “Mein Kampf” insane philosophy, and, because people think he’s a comedian pretending to be Hitler, becomes popular and eventually lands his own talk show. Soon the lines start to blur. Are people watching because they think it’s funny, or are they watching because they’re getting drawn in by his craziness? The book is written in such a way that the reader sometimes is tempted to sympathize with Hitler’s “logic” (such as his rant against the inattentiveness caused by cell phones), which makes it even scarier (and darkly funny at times).
I had a great satire teacher in college. He would’ve appreciated this book. It’s worth reading.
Look Who’s Back might be the best satire that I’ve seen since Catch-22… and I mean that since Catch-22 was published. After reading the first quarter of the book I started to describe it to a co-worker, he asked me if it was a treacly book about Hitler learning how wrong he was about his views. I can assure you mein Reader, it is not. Vermes packs so much punch into a relatively short book. Since it was originally published in German, one can assume that Look Who’s Back was intended as a commentary on modern Germany, but let me assure you, the commentary fits just as well for modern America and probably modern western culture.
I found it especially astute and chilling in the wake of Donald Trump’s seemingly never-ending successes within the national polls… and some of the commentary he’s made. As chilling and on point as the satire is, the book is also hysterical in its execution (as all good satire should be). The use of the first person narrative (from Hitler’s point of view) is often a source of giggles, this device, oft used in many a tale about displaced time travelers, seems all the more potent because… well… it’s Hitler.
There is very little world building (how did Hitler just wake up in a field in 2011? Why not the rest of his retinue? Why doesn’t he remember his suicide?) and as much as a fan of world building that I am – I think it was a stroke of genius for Vermes to omit that and have Hitler himself gloss over it – for more important matters.
I don’t believe that any blogs that I read on the regular have reviewed this book. In fact it wasn’t even in Creative Whim’s Ultimate Book Blogger Plugin. Regardless. I found a much more eloquent review over at 1streading’s blog.
This should change now. I know it sounds a little off, maybe a little distasteful, but just trust me on this one.
As I read it I could not help but remember an encounter with an older man at a party some thirty years ago. He was an immigrant from Germany and came to the festivities wearing a small Nazi party pin. How he got into the United States I do not know. When I asked him about the pin, he regaled me with explanations of how wonderful Hitler was for the German people. It made me sick. As I read this book I kept thinking there must be many more like the man I met years ago alive and well today in Germany. In fact the book has been made into a controversial movie in Germany. In the movie an actor dressed up like Hitler walks the Streets of Berlin and receives surprising comments from those who encounter him.
Sometimes comedies can turn out to be remarkably frightening.
Top reviews from other countries
That said it didn't seem likely that I would get round to reading it anytime soon, with many more 'valid' and pressing books to read. The chance came through a reduced price audio book read by the brilliant and engaging Julian Rhind-Tutt. This further arosed my interest and I subsequently read along with the spoken word. I found I read quicker than the recording but with the German pronoucation it did increase my enjoyment and left it more as an entertainment rather than the thoughts of my own mind.
This novel is a wonderful satire of our modern times and sets it against a man waking up in his beloved Germany over 60 years after his last memories. The punchline and clever juxtaposition is that this man belives himself to be Adolf Hitler. His attempt to continue his political career and pass judgement on everything from bagging dog poo to ring tones is really like most great humour based on observation. He never waivers from his belief that he is the Fuhrer and he wins many over as it is so illogical it appears more lucative to accept this persona as comedy genius.
I sure this book will not please many but you have to read it in my opinion to form a reasoned response and I was uncomfortable at times especially around the belief that the Jews had to be purged from Greater Germany. It is addressed in the book and the satire is widespread in its topics and approach.
I liked the aspect of the victors write the history so the German Volk (people) can not complain as they let their leader down by not spilling their last drop of blood. So if they had won the history books the view of Nastion Socialism would be that much better. "Look Who's Back does not airbrush history or sidestep issues or contemporary situations. The holocaust did happen and its personal horrors are treated with empathy that Hitler in hindsight could not share.
It is a fiction but in the process it is a thought provoking novel that amuses and challenges in equal measure, To enjoy the book isn't to side with the Nazi party but an admission of one's humanity for any writing worth reading must stir one's passion and engage one's thinking beyond bed, rise, work and social interaction.
The plot, as bizarre as it is, works. Hitler comes back, and finds himself all alone in a Germany that has moved on. Overcoming his initial bafflement at the (for him) sudden change, he quickly adapts and exploits the media's misunderstanding of his appearance as that of an excellent mimic or comedian, and after being offered his own TV show, masters the internet and YouTube. His following spreads, as people find his sharp dissection of modern German politics and parties -- including the right wing ones -- highly incisive, and accurate.
He survives sustained media smears, and ... well, you read the book's ending for yourself, and it might not be what you would think it to be. Just one hint, without spoiling the plot: the book doesn't really end the story.....
This book had me laughing out loud as much as shaking my head in disagreement. A definite MUST READ.
There is a lot of factual historical information in this book. The satirical aspect makes it fun to read and in the English translation, everything that is of deep-routed German cultural nature and not widely known to other nationalities is explained. The translator really has achieved what I wouldn't have though was possible and that is to translate this book at all, without it losing any of the bite the German original is so famous for in Germany. A bit "Well done!" to the translator Jamie Bulloch and, of course, to the author Timur Vermes.
This book is well-written, extremely well translated, it's educational, historically correct and fun.

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