Look Who's Back by Timur Vermes

“Hitler wasn’t all that bad, considering he’s now a celebrity”

With daring and dark humor, Look Who's Back skewers the absurdity and depravity of the cult of personality in modern media culture.

I appreciate how this Hitler was written, he isn't being presented to us like some comical monster or a clown. Instead, his logic (no matter how twisted and how hateful this logic is), his likes and dislikes, and even his opinions on his comrades are all displayed in a realistic way.

I was hoping that Hitler would experience an epiphany at some point, and did think that was going to happen when one of the characters talks of the sadness and anger of their Jewish relative at the fact that they are working with what is believed to be a very accurate Hitler impersonator.

However, any epiphany never happens and all we have is a character that you could feel sympathy for viewing the modern world seen through an imagined Hitler’s eyes.

While some may argue that it shows how a new Hitler figure could appear again and that it’s very profound, I can’t help being very uncomfortable with Hitler being portrayed as simplistically as a grumpy old man struggling with the modern world despite the message.