Because we strive to bring you only the best and most positive news on your hump day, here’s one for you to swallow: Adolf Hitler‘s book Mein Kampf have soared since a special edition reprint of the book went on sale a year ago in Germany, surprising even the publisher.
The new edition is the first reprint since World War II. Though the book was never strictly banned in Germany – it could be found in secondhand bookshops all over the country – its copyright has been closely held by the state, who did not permit a rerun.
Despite the fact this is a dense academic version of the text, with a whole stack of annotations, its still sold 85,000 copies since its release – enough to propel it to the top of Der Spiegel‘s bestseller list.
Before you call your German mates and tell ’em to retreat to their bunker, it’s worth remembering that – as the BBC points out – it’s likely that a chunk of those sales are for academic institutions and libraries, not necessarily neo-Nazis in their dank lairs. Nonetheless, it still took publishers at the Institute for Contemporary History totally by surprise.
“These sales figures have taken us by storm,” said the publisher’s head, Andreas Wirsching. “No-one could really have expected them.”
Look, in a time of great global unease and a pivot to the harder right, this is a little concerning. But it’s annotated edition – let’s hope whatever disaffected youths at risk of radicalisation read those bloody notes in the margins, hey?
Source: New York Times.
Photo: Inglourious Basterds.
