A biting satire about life in Nazi Germany.

The characters in After Midnight are bumbling and tipsy, and their confusion about acceptable politics leads to accidental, and hilarious, criticisms of the hypocrisy, idiocy, and pageantry of the Third Reich.

The afterward in the Penguin Modern Classics was an interesting analysis of how different characters represented Keun's criticism of other writers' reactions to Nazi repression - artistic suicide by writing drivel about ze fuhrer, giving up the fight altogether, or emigrating and continuing the fight with whatever means possible. Keun herself chose to stay in Germany for several years after Hitler's rise to power and it seems she believed she could write subversively from within the rigid confines of censorship: she applied (and was denied) membership into the official guild that granted authors the right to be published, and she later sued the Gestapo for financial losses after they banned and burned her books (one might call this a kafkaesque performance art of sorts lol). In the end she did emigrate, but her later departure as compared to many other anti-Nazi authors gave her a unique well of lived experience to draw from for her writing.

"And men like that have to find time to govern the country as well. Personally, I can't think how they do it all. Take the Führer: he devotes almost his entire life to being photographed for his people. Just imagine, what an achievement! Having your picture taken the whole time with children and pet dogs, indoors and out of doors--never any rest. And constantly going about in aeroplanes, or sitting through long Wagner operas, because that's German art, and he sacrifices himself for German art as well. Well, fame always demands some sacrifices."