Written while Hans Keilson was in hiding during World War II,
The Death of the Adversary
is the self-portrait of a young man helplessly fascinated by an unnamed "adversary" whom he watches rise to power in 1930s Germany. It is a tale of horror, not only in its evocation of Hitler's gathering menace but also in its hero's desperate attempt to discover logic where none exists. A psychological fable as wry and haunting as
Badenheim 1939
,
is a lost classic of modern fiction.