The Daily Beast discusses the literary success of Irene Nemirovsky and Hans Fallada, two rediscovered novelists who wrote about World War Two and resistance to Germany. Add Hans Keilson to that list.
From the piece...
It's important, then, to keep one's eyes on both sides of the literary-and-commercial divide when another alleged discovery comes along, particularly in an age hungry for the lurid sheen of memoir-style truth. But, as a critic and reader, it's thrilling when that writer deserves the hype. In this case, Hans Keilson, a German physician who fled to the Netherlands before World War II and later joined the Dutch resistance, helping to spirit downed pilots and Jews out of the country, is such an example. Farrar, Straus and Giroux has just published two Keilson novels, The Death of the Adversary and Comedy in a Minor Key, that the author began writing while underground. Adversary was originally published in the U.S. in 1962, when it was praised by TIME magazine, making Keilson something like a re-discovery for American readers.
This is the first English publication of Comedy in a Minor Key, a slim and poignantly titled novel. Based on the author's time in hiding and dedicated to the Dutch couple that sheltered him, Comedy tells the story of Wim and Marie, a married couple in their mid-twenties, who take in Nico, a fortyish Jew fleeing Germany.
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