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Comedy in a Minor Key

by Hans Keilson, Damion Searls (Translator)

3.7 of 5 stars 3.70 · rating details · 820 ratings · 188 reviews

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 f...more

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Published November 26th 2010 by Hesperus Press Ltd (first published 1947)

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Aug 09, 2012 Cheryl rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

Elegant writing can mean prose layered with expressive language. Proust comes to mind. For me, elegance comes from precise words, minimally phrased that speak truth in a profound way. COMEDY IN A MINOR KEY is an example of such writing. In less than one hundred-fifty pages, Hans Keilson tells a story of the Holocaust that hasn't been exhaustively told. Most of us know about the camps, rail transports, and ordinary citizens' complicity. Keilson tells another tale, one few have thought about but e...more

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Nov 11, 2011 Lauren rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Go google Hans Keilson. No, I’m not kidding. Go read his Wikipedia entry or one of the articles that come up about him and then come back to this review. Yeah. That’s a pretty crazy life history, right? Sort of makes you want to read his book even if it’s horrible. Good news: the book’s not horrible. In fact, I’d even say The New York Times wasn’t exaggerating when they called this book a masterpiece. During WWII, a young couple hides a Jewish man in their home and all is going well until he die...more

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Apr 30, 2013 Annabelle rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book. It is short, maybe too short, but it is so evocative. Author Keilson was born inGerman, but joined the Dutch resistance and writes in Dutch. He is said to be, by the New York Times, ones of the great writers of the 20th century. It is quite psychological, as author Keilson was a therapist for children abuse during WW II, and I’m a psychologist so it makes sense that I would like it. It is about a Jewish diamond trader, Nico, who is hidden by a Dutch couple, Marie and Wim, duri...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Myriam rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novella

'Een buitengewoon mooi en sober verhaal over alledaagse menselijkheid in onalledaagse tijden.' (de Volkskrant)

Een prachtige, suggestieve stijl geeft deze novelle een verrassende kracht. ('En achter de horizon de stuivende zee. Een zilveren naald hield daar als een glinsterende band aarde, hemel en water bijeen.').

Mooi omdat het een weinig verteld verhaal is: over mensen die geen uitgesproken politiek engagement hebben of geen deel uitmaken van grotere bewegingen of groeperingen, maar die uit een...more

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Nov 09, 2011 John David rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction

The premise is simple enough. A married couple, Wim and Marie, decide to take in a Jew named Nico during World War II. In hiding him, the comfortably middle-class Wim and Marie learn what it means to live the precarious life of a Jew in 1940s Holland, in what would have otherwise been a set of rather ordinary circumstances. Soon afterwards, Nico becomes ill and eventually dies in their house, leaving the couple in the unique position of needing to dispose of a body no one can know they had there...more The premise is simple enough. A married couple, Wim and Marie, decide to take in a Jew named Nico during World War II. In hiding him, the comfortably middle-class Wim and Marie learn what it means to live the precarious life of a Jew in 1940s Holland, in what would have otherwise been a set of rather ordinary circumstances. Soon afterwards, Nico becomes ill and eventually dies in their house, leaving the couple in the unique position of needing to dispose of a body no one can know they had there in the first place. They eventually leave him wrapped in blankets in a nearby park, but soon discover that they might have left a clue to their identity behind. Therefore, in a wonderful turn of irony, Wim and Marie are themselves forced to instantly flee their house for fear of being discovered by the police.

The title is beautiful and wholly appropriate to the story. Juxtapositions are everywhere: there is the comic lightness of opera bouffe as Wim and Marie try to figure out how to get rid of Nico, but also the crushing dramatic realization of how this has all come about because of how some humans have chosen to treat others; the interplay of the quotidian as the couple go about their day-to-day existences in war-torn Holland with only the audience to find that this will one day be a place of grand historical importance.

Writer Francine Prose recently wrote in a piece in the New York Times that she has come to include Dutch writer Hans Keilson in her personal list of the world’s “very greatest writers.” On that alone, I took up Keilson’s “Death of the Adversary,” and was just as impressed. Despite Time magazine’s listing it as one of the ten best magazines of the year, aside Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” and Porter’s “Ship of Fools,” Keilson unfortunately fell into obscurity in the English-speaking world.

Translator Damion Searls’ revivification of his work is admirable and deserved, even while I found this “Comedy in a Minor Key” to be much less rewarding than “Death of the Adversary.” The former is a small, personal, intimate picture of human identity and frailty touchingly conceived, but it felt underdeveloped to me. Its size, at a mere 135 pages, gave me less time than I would have preferred to get to know Wim, Marie, and Nico. “Death of the Adversary,” however, deals with looming, world-historical forces that are at work in our lives, with bigger, abstracter ideas, and was probably for that reason more compelling for me. My rating of three stars here might be a little low. I didn’t know whether to go with three or four, but I can’t see myself rereading it any time soon, so I chose three. I would recommend to anyone interested in Keilson that they read “Death of the Adversary,” which I found to be truly spectacular.
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Oct 23, 2011 Tony rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

COMEDY IN A MINOR KEY. (1947; Eng. translation and publication 2010). Hans Keilson. *****.
Although first published in German in 1947, it was first translated by Damion Searls and published in 2010. The author was born in 1909, and published his first novel in 1934. During WW II, he joined the Resistance fighters in Holland. After the war, he became a noted psychiatrist, specializing in trauma in children. As far as I could find out, there is only one other of his books rendered into English, “T...more COMEDY IN A MINOR KEY. (1947; Eng. translation and publication 2010). Hans Keilson. *****.
Although first published in German in 1947, it was first translated by Damion Searls and published in 2010. The author was born in 1909, and published his first novel in 1934. During WW II, he joined the Resistance fighters in Holland. After the war, he became a noted psychiatrist, specializing in trauma in children. As far as I could find out, there is only one other of his books rendered into English, “The Death of the Adversary,” which I will endeavor to find. This short novel – or long short story – takes a look at the efforts of a Dutch family to hide a Jew from the Nazis during the war. It’s a twist on the Ann Frank type of story, though, in that the hider, Nico, was an adult male, a perfume salesman before the war. The hiders were Wim and Marie, a fairly young married couple with no children. The agreed to hide Nico after being approached by one of the underground members from the village outside of Amsterdam. After staying with the couple in an upstairs room, to which he was confined, Nico begins to direct his negative towards his keepers in many minor ways. For example, “Sometimes he had moments, hours of blind despair, when he hated them – them and the vase that stood downstairs in the front foom, on a little table with a lace doily next to the bookcase. It was a Chinese vase, an acquisition of Wim’s. He had brought it home from an auction one day, as a present for Marie and, he added laughing, for himself.” The stress on Wim and Marie during this period was also a huge factor in their lives. “A secret! It was not only that they had sheltered him – he himself, his person, his life, constituted the secret. It was as though a no-man’s land lay all around him, alien and impenetrable.” There is ultimately resentment on both sides during this ordeal. Then, suddenly, Nico contracts pneumonia and dies. Wim and Marie are then faced with the problem of how to get rid of the body. There are several other twists that follow until the story is told, all of them foreign to any stories that came out of scenarios like these from the War. Keilson manages to get inside the minds of both sides of this relationship, in a way that I found startling, in that I had never thought about this before. Most stories from these times and situations reflect only on the heroic act of hiding. All mimic Anne Frank’s diary – introspective narratives from the hiden person. This offering from Keilson turns it all around. Keilson died earlier this year at age 101. Highly recommended.
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Aug 15, 2011 Karima rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read this book because of a glowing review, by Francine Prose, in the NYTimes Book Review section, in August of 2010. The book had been recently released in English. The original written in German and published in 1947.

'The Death of the Adversary' and 'Comedy in a Minor Key' by Hans Keilson
By FRANCINE PROSE
The Dutch author Hans Keilson’s newly-translated novels of Nazi-occupied Europe, “The Death of the Adversary” and “Comedy in a Minor Key,” are midcentury masterpieces.
ABOUT: COMEDY IN A MINOR...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Tung rated it 4 of 5 stars

I believe in the cliché “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Too often over the years, a book has made me feel like the author was being paid by the word. I appreciate books whose author doesn’t waste words; Comedy in a Minor Key is a perfect example to me of how succinctness doesn’t have to compromise the story, and in fact, how succinctness can work in the favor of a story’s overall construct. The book tells the story of a Dutch couple (Wim and Marie) during WWII who are providing secret housing for...more I believe in the cliché “Brevity is the soul of wit.” Too often over the years, a book has made me feel like the author was being paid by the word. I appreciate books whose author doesn’t waste words; Comedy in a Minor Key is a perfect example to me of how succinctness doesn’t have to compromise the story, and in fact, how succinctness can work in the favor of a story’s overall construct. The book tells the story of a Dutch couple (Wim and Marie) during WWII who are providing secret housing for a middle-aged Jewish man (Nico), but who then must find a way to dispose of his body when he dies of pneumonia in their care. Even though the book was written in 1947, the book spends no unnecessary time explaining the context of their dilemma and assumes the reader knows what happened in the Netherlands during WWII, and what the inherent dangers of their predicament were. And despite the lack of drawn-out explanation of the novella’s context, reading this 60+ years later, I read this with the weight of history in my perspective and this book fits snugly into it. The book also leaves out all unnecessary backstory details and focuses squarely on Wim and Marie and Nico and their time together as hosts and guest – we don’t learn anything about their pasts: we don’t know what Wim and Marie were like growing up; we don’t know how they met; we don’t know how Nico escaped and went underground. And yet because the book chooses to focus squarely on their time together, once the body is eventually disposed of and the consequences of their decision played out, the story feels complete. There are many well-nuanced layers of thought running through this short book: the dynamic between hosts and guest, the prison-like existence lived by Nico and his emotional state in handling that, the younger Wim having to take charge of the much older Nico, the bonds built between people despite all these tensions, and so on. Just perfectly crafted. The translation I read suffered in a few sentences, but overall, the prose is tight and engaging. Highly recommended. (less)

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Sep 04, 2010 Rick rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Keilson is new to me. A German-Dutch novelist and psychiatrist who recently turned 100, Keilson was part of the Dutch resistance during World War II and was forced into hiding, much like one of the three main characters of this extraordinary novella. First published in 1947, Comedy in a Minor Key is brilliantly restrained and reflective. Wim and Marie, a young Dutch couple take in Nico, a middle-aged Jewish refugee and hide him in an extra bedroom with a well-hidden crawl space. Keilson avoids t...more Keilson is new to me. A German-Dutch novelist and psychiatrist who recently turned 100, Keilson was part of the Dutch resistance during World War II and was forced into hiding, much like one of the three main characters of this extraordinary novella. First published in 1947, Comedy in a Minor Key is brilliantly restrained and reflective. Wim and Marie, a young Dutch couple take in Nico, a middle-aged Jewish refugee and hide him in an extra bedroom with a well-hidden crawl space. Keilson avoids the obvious melodrama inherent in such a situation and instead focuses on the domestic challenge of three people living in close quarters for an unspecified time, with much secrecy and caution required. He explores the tension of strangers sharing a confinement, getting to know one another, surprising each other with their dependencies and habits and capacity to adapt, their small freedoms, and own secrets.

Barely 135 pages, Comedy in a Minor Key is a subtle, compassionate, richly human story with more complexity and mystery than one would think was possible to sneak into such a slim, matter of fact volume. “Wim slowly regained his usual composure. Even if he was the younger man here, he was still the host, and that brought with it various responsibilities. He felt that the other man had understood precisely the reasons for Wim’s initial discomfort and that he had made an effort to dispel it, even though he found himself in an even less comfortable situation. Wim offered him a cigarette and said, as he lit the match, ‘My wife and I are happy we can do something for you.’” These small true moments reveal the character of people who do the right thing in extreme circumstances, yet maintain the ambiguity and complexity of character and motive that are universal in circumstances great and small, profound and banal. This is one of two Keilson novels newly published/re-published in the U.S. and I will look for the second directly and hope that there are more to come this way.(less)

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Jan 04, 2013 Malcolm rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-contemporary

It is often the case that the best stories about the really big events are told in the smallest and most intimate ways, and when the event is Nazi occupation of much of Europe and its ‘final solution’ there is a sense that its size prevents any meaningful comprehension. This event, taking in Spain, saw nearly 10 years of declared and undeclared war, 13 million exterminated in camps, nearly 60 million dead (20 million of whom were from the Soviet Union, where it is still the Great Patriotic War),...more It is often the case that the best stories about the really big events are told in the smallest and most intimate ways, and when the event is Nazi occupation of much of Europe and its ‘final solution’ there is a sense that its size prevents any meaningful comprehension. This event, taking in Spain, saw nearly 10 years of declared and undeclared war, 13 million exterminated in camps, nearly 60 million dead (20 million of whom were from the Soviet Union, where it is still the Great Patriotic War), and most of the world thrown into turmoil.

This brilliant little novel finds a way to take us inside this inconceivable event by telling the story of a suburban Dutch couple who hide a Jew in their house (a refreshingly common event in occupied Holland). Wim and Marie accept Nico into their house, stretch their rations to feed him, put in place clear and simple rules to prevent discovery; it is a small, intimate and everyday tale. That is, until Nico dies, and Wim and Marie are then faced with what to do with the corpse of a man who should not exist and whose discovery could mean their end. Their problem is who they can trust as someone who will do their ‘patriotic duty’, and where even the smallest slip-up could mean detention and likely death.

Wim and Marie are ordinary lower middle class people, a factory officer worker studying for his exams and a housewife, although they are able afford a cleaning lady (yet another source of tension; can she be trusted?). Keilson paints a picture of a locality where ordinary people and minor officials turn blind eyes, where there is a conspiracy of silence fully in keeping with the Dutch national mythology of the Occupation; a mythology that is, to a large degree, borne out by actual events. What Keilson does extremely well in the book first published in 1947 is suggest just how tentative that conspiracy of silence was at the time, and betrayals were not uncommon. Wim and Marie and the people who help them are not confident in their trust even when it is given, and are surprised when people close to them turn out to be part of the organisation(s) we now think of as the Resistance. Reading carefully, then, we can see Keilson’s depiction of the cellular structure of the movement; this is a historically rich and well-crafted tale of occupation and the small ways that Occupation was weakened; at moments throughout the book images from the Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam (an excellent museum) kept coming to mind.

Keilson has a sparse writing style that effectively maintains tension and suggests the mundanity of the threat; Marie’s, Wim’s and Nico’s constant caution is intensified by the direct, unadorned style of the text (so all credit to Damion Searls as translator).

This is a treat of a book – well written, it seems well translated, and well produced – and highly recommended.(less)

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Jan 12, 2013 Lucinda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

Hans Keilson was a German Jew who fled to the Netherlands in 1936 (like many other German Jews, such as Anne Frank's family, for instance) and then went into hiding during the occupation. He was separated from his spouse and daughter during the duration of his period in hiding; she was not Jewish and pretended that her daughter had been borne of a German Officer. During this period he worked with the Dutch resistance, helping Jewish children in hiding who had been separated from their families (...more

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Nov 23, 2012 Booknblues rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: world-war-ll, war, netherlands

Comedy in a Minor Key
By Hans Keilson
5 stars
pp. 135

Hans Keilson’s Comedy in a Minor Key is hardly a comedy, but rather a tragic little tale set in Holland during World War II. Wim and Marie a young Dutch couple decide to do what they consider their patriotic duty and hide a Jewish man, a stranger to them. They know the man as Nico and unfortunately he sickens and dies. The tale shifts between the past and their memories of him and the present and how they will dispose of the body without being ca...more

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Feb 16, 2012 Sue Jelus rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book got very good reviews, which is why I read it. It was first published in 1947, and is set in Holland during WWII. It deals with an ordinary, generous couple who take a Jew into hiding as a patriotic act, a personal way of resisting the Nazi occupation. The book is well-wrought and very short, which makes it a good candidate for a weekend read. But it was a little slow and simple for my tastes. While it dealt very sensitively with the emotional impact living in hiding has on people, it...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Beverly rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this up at the library knowing nothing about the author, Dr. Keilson. I just finished the novella and read this NY Times article about him: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/04/boo...

I'm even more impressed. I enjoyed the novella because Keilson handles the omniscient third person with grace (no easy task, at least for me!), and he writes in the spare style that admire so much (James Salter's stories, for example). More importantly, though, I found this book riveting because of the author'...more

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Jan 18, 2011 Miri Glasser rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A pleasant surprise! I read this book after giving it as a gift, and found it to be a deeply touching story which has to be among my favorite from this year. It is the tale of a couple in Nazi-occupied Holland during WWII, who position themselves as part of the underground resistance movement by providing refuge for a Jewish man seeking to escape the fate which befalling European Jews during that period. As a reader I found the story contained poignant passages which serve as displays of the sim...more

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Aug 20, 2010 Kasa Cotugno rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: era-world-war-ii

This story of a young Dutch couple who hide a Jewish stranger for a year in their home is a gem. Wim and Marie are not committed to a cause or outraged by outside influences, but they are ordinary, decent people acting out of human kindness. The narrative is presented elliptically, probing the emotions of the couple and the man they know as Nico who dies of pnemonia before liberation, thus presenting a dilemma of how to dispose of the body. The comedy referred to in the title is more about the c...more

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Oct 01, 2011 Kris McCracken rated it 4 of 5 stars

Hans Keilson’s Comedy in a Minor Key was actually written in 1947, but didn’t receive an English translation until much later. This short novel centres on the lives of a young Dutch couple during the Second World War who have decided to hide a Jewish stranger in their house. Despite the very real danger, their rationale isn’t immediately obvious (even to them); a combination of ‘patriotic duty’, ‘Christian charity’, ‘civil disobedience’ is cited. Indeed, at one point the husband (in an attempt t...more

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Sep 19, 2010 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, literature

What an intriguing and wonderful book. Introduced to this work through a review that both my parents and I read in the New York Times by Francine Prose where she positively gushed about this work, my parents gifted it to me for my birthday. What a wonderful present.

Set in the Netherlands during the German world War 2 occupation, this novel traces the lives impacted when a young Dutch couple takes in and hides a Jewish man who subsequently dies of pneumonia. During their anxious attempts to dis...more

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Jun 11, 2013 Vivian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book on the heels of another about resistance workers during WWII. It was very different but just as wonderful a story. This one was not about people who was very activist oriented as the previous book was but rather was about an ordinary couple just moved to help by doing the little that they could. The author did a fine job bringing the characters to life. By using seemingly insigficant details such as describing a beautiful vase that the hidden man admired but in his despair wishe...more

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Dec 29, 2011 Ritu rated it 4 of 5 stars

A good interesting story - well thought out. It is a simple story with a couple - Wim and Mary who provide shelter to a stranger, a jew who seeks protection frm the Nazis. Wim and Mary must do this in absolute secracy. A year passes and all of a sudden, Nico, the jew, dies in their household due to pneumonia. Here comes the significance of the title - It is ironical that Nico could have died if left in the world - so he had sought the couple's protection; instead he dies of a disease in secracy...more

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Aug 22, 2011 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: german

A Dutch couple, Wim and Marie, are hiding a Jew upstairs. And then he dies.

Hans Keilson just died this year at 101. His books, including this one written in 1947, have been newly and brilliantly translated and republished.

You can read this on a flight from Dallas/Fort Worth to Pittsburgh.

Nico, the Jew upstairs, tells this wonderful couple, "It is not just the Jews." Maybe it will be Wim and Marie too. I'm no plot spoiler though.

A Comedy in a Minor Key is indeed told in the Dorian mode. A lovel...more

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Sep 07, 2010 Joanne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Picked this up after the New York Times book review. It's a Holocaust novel written shortly after the Holocaust, though it never exactly mentions names or events. A Dutch couple is just hiding a Jewish man, and then he dies of pneumonia, and they have to figure out what to do with the body. That's the comedy part - though it's dark comedy.

The couple's relationship with each otehr is sweet, and the way they interact with their guest seems genuine, as do his emotions about being cooped up and the...more

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Nov 29, 2012 Ash rated it 4 of 5 stars

I read this book for English class and it was a great read. Quite an ironic title for the story. The story takes place during the time of the Holocaust in Holland where a young Dutch couple,Marie and Wim, agree to hide a Jewish man named Nico into their home. Unfortunately Nico gets sick form pneumonia and passes away. Now Marie and Wim are to dispose of Nico's body without anyone ever finding out. This leads the couple to go out into hiding so they won't be arraigned. The story does move back a...more

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Jan 30, 2012 Peter rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 20th-century

As another reviewer suggested, I did read some facts about Hans Keilson's life before reading this short novel, and the fact that he actually hid in someone's home to escape the holocaust maybe gave some added weight to it. But I think I would have enjoyed it anyway. It's weird to read about the trivial embarrassments and secretive uncertainties--much more than the serious dangers--involved in saving someone's life in this way and dealing with having them around all the time. And on the part of...more

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Feb 27, 2011 Brian rated it 3 of 5 stars

This short claustrophobic novel about a Dutch couple harboring a Jewish man during World War II is definitely a story written in a minor key. When the man becomes ill and dies, they are left with the dilemma of how to dispose of his body.

It is a novel about being entrapped and separated, physically and spiritually. It's also about the sadness and resignation that follows when we recognize this sense of being separate and, therefore, trapped is an inevitable part of life.

Although there is much i...more

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Aug 24, 2011 M rated it 3 of 5 stars

Hans Keilson survived World War II - being Jewish and German made this no easy feat. Drawing from this experience, Keilson penned this tragic tale about a Dutch couple helping hide a Jewish salesman from the Nazi regime. Wim and Marie agree to shelter a man whom they come to call Nico. As the trio become close - and avoid close calls during everyday activities - Nico falls ill; what follows is a look at the brave and dangerous risks taken in the name of humanity. Keilson does a marvelous job at...more

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May 26, 2011 Beth Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars

ebook.

this book was more read more like a short story...the kind of short story that i love. it was a succinct little novel, but packed full of so much description and feeling that it's impossible to read it without being moved by it's content.

basically, it's the story of a couple who have decided to take in and hide a Jewish man during the Holocaust. but there is nothing basic about this tale. at times it's heart wrenching, at times it's clever. but really, it's about the relationship that deve...more

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Jan 10, 2011 Agnes Benis rated it 4 of 5 stars

The book had a powerful affect on me. It is a simple story that says alot sometimes in a paragraph, sometimes in a sentence. The author exposes the full horror of the Nazi regime without ghaastly details, but rather through the single thread of one Jewish refugee hidden by a Dutch couple. He dies in their custody and the body must be gotten rid of at great jeopardy to the couple. It explores the man's time in their home and what it was like for all three, the importance of material things (vase)...more

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Oct 07, 2010 Cindy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I kind of picked this up on the spur of the moment, but was fascinated with the topic and the prose. It is described as Kafkaesque...and I see that, although it wasn't near as shocking as some of the Kafka I've read, rather thought provoking, and I give it a 4, because I have been thinking about it even after reading it...and I'd love to discuss it.
Is it harder to suffer alone or with a group? If you suffer silently, then you only have your self to motivate and to best, you live with your own th...more

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Mar 17, 2011 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: book-group

There are some beautiful passages in this sad novella. Wim and Marie are hiding Nico in their house during the war and although Nico may have escaped the enemy without, he cannot evade the enemy within. Once Nico is gone, the couple find themselves also having to flee. I guess that is the so-called comedy but I have to say that, although I love the title for its irony, this book doesn't have any comedy at all. I love the image of Nico hiding his American (?) cigarettes just to have something tha...more

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About Hans Keilson

Hans Keilson is the author of Comedy in a Minor Key and 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 writer...more

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