My enemy - I shall refer to him as B. - entered my life about twenty years ago. At that time I had only a very vague idea of what it meant to be someone's enemy; still less did I realise what it was to have an enemy. One has to mature gradually towards one's enemy as towards one's best friend.
1930s Germany; the shadow of Nazism looms. Pictures of the new dictator, 'B.', fill magazines and newspapers. Our hero is ten when his world begins to change dramatically. Suddenly, the other children won't let him join in their games. Later, he is refused a job on a shop-floor. Later still, he hears youths boasting of an attack on a Jewish cemetery. Both hypnotised and horrified by his enemy, our hero chronicles the fear, anger and defiance of everyday life under tyranny.
Written while Hans Keilson was in hiding during World War II, this novel is a powerful account of what he outlived. Painful, trenchant and streaked with dark humourThe Death of the Adversaryis a rediscovered masterpiece.
Born in Germany in 1909, Hans Keilson finished medical school just as laws against Jewish doctors came into force. He published his first novel in 1933. It was the last novel that the German publisher Fischer Verlag were allowed to publish by a Jewish writer. By 1934 the novel was banned. His editor warned him to get out of the country and Keilson emigrated to the Netherlands in 1936. In mid 1943 Keilson went into hiding, began to writeThe Death of the Adversaryand joined the Dutch Resistance. His parents were killed in Auschwitz. After the war, as a psychiatrist in the Netherlands Keilson pioneered the treatment of war trauma in children. In 2008 he received the Die Welt Literature Prize. Hans Keilson has recently celebrated his 101st birthday.
Written by Keilson whilst in hiding during WWII, The Death of the Adversary is a rediscovered masterpiece.>
