HEROES LIKE US

by Thomas Brussig ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1997

A sporadically amusing satire on military and bureaucratic machismo, whose narrator, Klaus Uhltzscht, relates in a distractingly breezy voice his protracted adolescence, confused preoccupation with sex, and dutiful service as an officer in East Germany's Stasi. Brussig never quite joins together his novel's erotic and political preoccupations, and its wry potshots at burgher moral complacency quickly grow tiresome. Still, this lighthearted portrayal of a Teutonic Alexander Portnoy offers several crisply funny scenes, and the plot twist through which Klans manages to ""end the Cold War"" almost makes you forget the story's self-indulgent longueurs.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0374527601

Page Count: 288

Publisher: "Farrar, Straus & Giroux"

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1997

Categories: FICTION