An extraordinary and harrowing tale, Comedy in a Minor Key examines the dark and desperate humour that co-exists with moments of terror, in a work deeply reminiscent of The Diary of Anne Frank.

Wim and Marie, an ordinary Dutch couple, have been hiding Nico, a Jewish man, for many months during the Occupation, and seemingly without suspicion - but when Nico becomes ill and dies, they must find a way to dispose of the corpse. Their attempts take on almost farcical proportions, yet with a backdrop of one of the worst periods of world history, any notion of comedy must surely give way to a black ineluctable tragedy.

Review

Praise for "Comedy in a Minor Key
"“For busy, harried or distractible readers who have the time and energy only to skim the opening paragraph of a review, I’ll say this as quickly and clearly as possible: “The Death of the Adversary” and “Comedy in a Minor Key” are masterpieces, and Hans Keilson is a genius . . . Although the novels are quite different, both are set in Nazi-occupied Europe and display their author’s eye for perfectly illustrative yet wholly unexpected incident and detail, as well as his talent for storytelling and his extraordinarily subtle and penetrating understanding of human nature. But perhaps the most distinctive aspect they share is the formal daring of the relationship between subject matter and tone. Rarely has a finer, more closely focused lens been used to study such a broad and brutal panorama, mimetically conveying a failure to come to grips with reality by refusing to call that reality by its proper name . . . Rarely have such har

German-born Hans Keilson (1909-2011) is a distinguished and award-winning psychiatrist who specialises in the traumatic effects of the Holocaust on Jewish survivors.