SOURCE: Haberl, Franz P. Review of Die wahre Geschichte des Ah Q, by Christoph Hein. World Literature Today 59, no. 4 (autumn 1985): 588.

In the following review of Die wahre Geschichte des Ah Q, Haberl offers a negative assessment of the play, calling the work “static” in regard to Germany's social and political development.

Two clochards vegetate in the dilapidated attic of a temple in a vaguely Chinese ambience. They complain about their pitiful condition and talk about anarchy and revolution. Once a week a nun brings them milk soup. On one of these occasions Ah Q (one of the protagonists [of Die wahre Geschichte des Ah Q]) asks her to sleep with him. She refuses and flees. The policeman, acting on orders of the “gracious lord” of the village, administers twenty lashes to Ah Q. His friend Wang comforts him by invoking the impending revolution. Ah Q then leaves the...