Novelist of life in Nazi-run Europe

Hans Keilson, a German-born psychoanalyst who won literary fame at the very end of his long life when two of his long-forgotten works of fiction, set in Nazi-occupied Europe, were republished to great acclaim, died on Tuesday in Hilversum, the Netherlands. He was 101. Dr. Keilson, a physician by training, published his first novel at 23. That book, “Life Goes On,” offered a dark picture of German political life between the wars, reflected in the troubles encountered by Max, a Jewish store owner modeled on Dr. Keilson’s father, a textile merchant. It was banned by the Nazis in 1934.

Two years later Dr. Keilson emigrated to the Netherlands with his future wife, Gertrud Manz. He began a new novel, “The Death of the Adversary,” about a young Jewish man’s experiences in Germany as the Nazis gain a grip on power, but he put the manuscript aside after the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940 forced him to live in hiding in Delft. His experiences provided the material for the novella “Comedy in a Minor Key,” about a Dutch couple who shelter an elderly Jew who dies of natural causes. After disposing of the body carelessly, they too must go into hiding. The novella was published by a German-language Amsterdam press in 1947, the same year Anne Frank’s diary was released. “The Death of the Adversary,” which Dr. Keilson resumed writing after the war, came out in Germany in 1959, and a stilted English translation appeared in 1962. A brief notice in The New York Times described it as a “novel of suspense.” Although the novel sold well and Time magazine named it one of the top 10 books of the year, along with works like Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” and Katherine Anne Porter’s “Ship of Fools,” Dr. Keilson slipped into literary obscurity. He wrote no more fiction, he later said, because he believed that he no longer had an audience.

In 2007 Damion Searls, a literary translator,chanced upon "Comedy in a Minor Key" in an Austrian bookstore's sidewalk bargain bin and mounted a successful campaign to resurrect Dr. Keilson's works. In 2010 Farrar, Straus & Giroux  reissued "The Death of the Adversary"  which was translated to English by Ivo Jarosy in 1962.Mr. Searls's translation of "Comedy in a Minor Key," was also published in Britain by Hesperus Press. The novelist Francine Prose, in The New York Times Book Review, declared both works masterpieces and their author a genius. “Rarely have such harrowing narratives been related with such wry, off-kilter humor, and in so quiet a whisper,” she wrote. “Read these books and join me in adding him to the list, which each of us must compose on our own, of the world’s very greatest writers.” 

After his first novel was banned, his publisher, Samuel Fischer, told him to leave Germany as quickly as possible. His future wife, a graphologist, had also sensed impending disaster. After Dr. Keilson showed her a sample of Hitler’s handwriting in 1935, she said, “He’s going to set the world on fire.”