By Hans Keilson (Trans: Damion Searls)
Hesperus Press, £9.99
Our fascination with the Holocaust derives in part from the insights we assume it affords us into the way ordinary people behave under extreme conditions. There is nothing so unusual or heroic about the decision of Keilson's young Dutch couple to harbour a middle-aged Jewish man on the run from the Nazis but by shining a light through the cracks created in everyday existence by the altered circumstances in which his characters find themselves, Keilson is able to achieve a subtle yet powerful effect.
Though first published in Germany in 1947, Comedy in a Minor Key appears in English for the first time only now in Damion Searls's first-rate translation.
Keilson wrote the book when he was a German-Jewish refugee, hiding in the same circumstances as Nico, the Jewish anti-hero of his novel. He remained in Holland after the war and became a psychiatrist specialising in children suffering from war trauma. He shows himself an acute observer, alert to the minutiae through which character emerges.
