Look Who's Back

Adolf Hitler wakes up in a Berlin park in 2011 with no memory of how he got there. He assumes the war is still ongoing. Everyone around him assumes he is a method actor or a comedian. He gets a TV show. He goes viral. Vermes wrote this German bestseller as a satire so uncomfortable it made readers laugh and then immediately feel terrible about laughing — which is exactly the point. The novel's most devastating argument is not that people are stupid but that the media ecosystem of the 21st century would amplify a charismatic authoritarian without anyone stopping to ask whether they should. Funnier and more chilling than it has any right to be simultaneously.