Hans Keilson 
Comedy in a Minor Key 
a novel

A penetrating study of ordinary people resisting the Nazi occupation – and, true to its title, a dark comedy of wartime manners – Comedy in a Minor Key tells the story of Wim and Marie, a Dutch couple who first hide a Jew they know as Nico, and must then dispose of his body when he dies of pneumonia. This novella, first published in 1947 and now translated into English for the first time, shows Hans Keilson at his best: deeply ironic, sympathetic, and brilliantly modern – an heir to Joseph Roth and Franz Kafka. In 2008, when Keilson received Germany’s prestigious Welt Literature Prize, the citation praised his work for exploring ‘the destructive impulse at work in the twentieth century, down to its deepest psychological and spiritual ramifications’. Comedy in a Minor Key introduces Australian readers to a forgotten classic author, a witness to World War II and a sophisticated storyteller whose books remain as fresh as when they first came to light.