Books of the week: Comedy in a Minor Key by Hans Keilson and The Death of the Adversary by Hans Keilson

These two Dutch-language masterpieces have just been released in new English translations.

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $22 and $14)

Hans Keilson is “a genius,” said Francine Prose in The New York Times. The former psychiatrist, a German-born Jew who just turned 100, possesses “an extraordinarily subtle and penetrating understanding of human nature,” which shines through in two Dutch-language masterpieces that have just been released in new English translations. The first, 1947’s Comedy in a Minor Key, has never appeared in English before. It’s a terse, trenchant tale about a Dutch couple who shelter a Jewish refugee during World War II—only to have him die of natural causes, leaving them with the problem of having to dispose of his corpse. The second, The Death of the Adversary, from 1959, is a more ruminative take on the effects of Hitler’s rise. But both use daring juxtapositions between content and tone, and have become surprisingly fast sellers a half-century after Keilson wrote them.

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