MacLehose Press

Timur Vermes and Hitler’s return

German publishing sensation Er Ist Wieder Da (working title: Look Who’s Back) continues to make headlines around the world ahead of its April 2014 publication by MacLehose press.

This week alone Timur Vermes’ black satire, in which Adolf Hitler wakes up, confused but very much alive, in contemporary Berlin, has been featured in the Guardian and the Telegraph , which praised the “pitch-black prose” and “relentlessly dark” humour of Vermes’ debut novel.

Er Ist Wieder Da has sold over 400,000 copies in Germany, stubbornly refusing to shift from the top of the bestseller charts and kindling furious debate in the German media about the book’s taste – though no-one denies its hilarity.

Once Hitler works out where, and when, he is, he sets about trying to understand this strange new Germany, with its Turkish newspapers and its media executives, and in doing so unwittingly becomes an “ironic” Youtube sensation, critically-lauded “impersonator”, a TV personality, and someone whose opinion is listened to.

Er Ist Wieder Da: Springtime 2014 is for Hitler. . .

Look Who’s Conquered Europe Again

Following its breathtaking success in Germany (1.3 million copies sold, and still counting!), Timur Vermes’s utterly unique debut novel Look Who’s Back has made far shorter work of conquering Europe than its notorious protagonist.

While Hitler himself took a sluggish six years from becoming chancellor to his first successful conquest (everyone knows Anschlusses don’t count), Timur Vermes has infiltrated every corner of Europe in barely more than a year.

And, not only that, but he’s even made it as far as a Persian edition – Hitler, famously, struggled when he tried to go East.

Once again, Britain stands alone in the face of this eerily identikit coiffured army (trust the Dutch, on the right, to be different).

But behind the brilliant cover, Look Who’s Back is a blistering satire that casts a Führious eye over the absurdities of twenty-first century life. Containing Hitler’s encounters with television, the internet, neo-Nazis and pooper-scoopers, it’s both hilarious and challenging, and is sure to capture the imagination in Britain.

The (marketing and publicity) blitz begins in April!