The Malaysian Insider :: Books
The Malaysian Insider :: Books |
| Comic novel imagining Hitler’s return is German bestseller Posted: 26 Jan 2013 05:14 PM PST  Vermes said he wanted to present Hitler in a new light. — AFP pic Instead of committing suicide in his bunker on April 30, 1945, in "He's Back" (Er Ist Wieder Da), Hitler wakes up in 2011 without the slightest idea what has happened in the intervening 66 years. He stumbles through Berlin, dazed by the fact that Germany is now ruled by a woman and is home to millions of Turks. In one scene, the Nazi leader asks a group of boys for directions, addressing them as "Ronaldo Hitler youth". He has mistaken their football shirts bearing the name of the soccer star as some kind of military uniform. "Who's the old guy?" the boys ask each other. Such is the tone in the nearly 400-page novel by Timur Vermes, a 45-year-old journalist. In a celebrity-obsessed society where success is often gauged by follower numbers on social networks or YouTube views, Hitler soon becomes the star of an entertainment show with a Turkish host. "You're golden my dear! This is just the beginning, believe me," his producer says. Bild, Europe's widest circulation newspaper, complains: "He killed millions of people. Today, millions cheer him on YouTube." In the book, Hitler discovers jeans, tries to create an email address ("Hitler 89" referring to the year of his birth is already taken) and discovers cooking shows. A farce in poor taste to some, a political satire to others, "He's Back" has done well in bookstores. With a print run of 360,000, the book recently made Germany's bestseller list and is set to be published in English and more than a dozen other languages. The author says he wanted to present Hitler in a new light. "We too often harbour the negative attitude of those who see Hitler only as a monster to make themselves feel better," Vermes says. "I thought it was important to show how he would operate and how he would act in today's world." The story, written in the first person, is dotted with rambling inner monologues like those in "Mein Kampf", the treatise Hitler wrote in 1924 that Germany plans to reprint in two years, the first re-issue since 1945. The book's black-and-white cover features a stylised rendering of Hitler's side-parted hair and the title is printed in place of his moustache. Even the price — €19.33 (RM77) — is Hitler-related, a reference to the year he became chancellor. The book is the "latest outgrowth of a Hitler commercialisation machine that breaks all taboos to make money", wrote the weekly news magazine Stern. Unthinkable even 10 years ago, Hitler is today increasingly the subject of comedians and artists — including a comic film directed by a Jew and a burlesque musical comedy. Daniel Erk, a journalist and Hitler expert, calls the phenomenon the "banalisation of evil". — AFP/Relaxnews |
| Banned China, Russia writers on Man Booker International list Posted: 26 Jan 2013 04:12 PM PST
Chinese author Yan Lianke and Russia's Vladimir Sorokin stood out from a list of nominees from nine different countries in the running for the £60,000 (RM300,000) prize for global writers whose fiction is written in or translated into English. "These are writers who we have found ourselves enduringly grateful to, who we will re-read," said Christopher Ricks, chairman of the five-man judging panel, at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India where the list was released. "They write in ways that are astonishingly different." Around 150 authors were considered for the prize, which will be awarded on May 22 in London, Ricks added. Marie NDiaye, from France, is the youngest ever nominee for the prize, at 45, and joins Peter Stamm, Switzerland's first nominee, on the list. The United States has two nominees, Lydia Davis and Marilynne Robinson, the only writer this year to have been shortlisted for the prize in the past. Canadian Josip Novakovich, Israeli Aharon Appelfeld, Indian UR Ananthamurthy and Intizar Husain from Pakistan complete the list of nominees. The Man Booker International Prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published fiction either originally in English or whose work is generally available in translation in the English language. The judging panel for the Man Booker International Prize 2013 consists of the scholar and literary critic, Christopher Ricks; author and essayist, Elif Batuman; writer and broadcaster, Aminatta Forna; novelist, Yiyun Li and author and academic, Tim Parks. Philip Roth won the prize in 2011, Alice Munro in 2009, Chinua Achebe in 2007 and Ismail Kadaré won the inaugural prize in 2005. In addition, there is a separate award for translation and, if applicable, the winner may choose a translator of his or her work into English to receive a prize of £15,000. The Man Booker International Prize is significantly different from the annual Man Booker Prize in that it highlights one writer's continued creativity, development and overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. The 2012 Man Booker prize was won by British author Hilary Mantel for "Bring Up the Bodies", the second novel in her ongoing trilogy set in the court of Henry VIII. She also won in 2009 for the first novel of the series "Wolf Hall". — Reuters |
JAIPUR, Jan 27 — Two authors who had books banned in their home countries featured prominently in the list of 10 nominees for the 2013 Man Booker International Prize, the judging panel has said.| You are subscribed to email updates from The Malaysian Insider :: Books To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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