The Dance of Genghis Cohn

by Romain Gary

Book Overview

Genghis Cohn is the ribald dybbuk who haunts the mind of Schatz, once an SS officer,now the police chief of a city in the new Germany. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: B000H4I1RS
• Release Date: January 1969
• Publisher: A Signet Book
• Weight: 0.26 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Get your own ghost.

This novel from 1967 or 1968 tried to encompass the politics of death by picking the ghost of a Jewish comedian to complain about all the impositions which society may impose upon "Peace to our ashes." In the movie version, the ghost complains that the unappreciated comic's line, "I died out there," applies to him in a literal way. I could appreciate the comedy of this book before I went to Nam, so it seemed strange to me that the selective service would send a person with such an inappropriate emotional response, my love of ghosts, to Vietnam. By 1968, times were so desparate that they, my local draft board, thought it ought to be their choice more than mine, and I didn't have anything to bet on the outcome but my life. The 20th century would be taken far more seriously than it deserves to be, at this late date, if anyone still thinks that really, my sense of humor should have died out there. Lighten up, already.