SOURCE: Blomster, Wes. Review of Der Tangospieler, by Christoph Hein. World Literature Today 64, no. 2 (spring 1990): 308.

In the following mixed review of Der Tangospieler, Blomster compares the narrative to Franz Kafka's The Trial and evaluates certain political undertones.

Both background and theme make Christoph Hein's brief narrative Der Tangospieler a realistic descendant of Kafka's Trial. Hein sets his story in the summer of 1968, when the attention of both East and West was focused upon attempted reform in Prague while Hein's young historian Dallow sought to reenter the society that had sent him to prison two years earlier. The dubious nature of East German justice that condemned Dallow for his participation in a parody of the aged leader Walter Ulbricht by a student cabaret recalls the omnipresent court portrayed by Kafka over half a century ago. For Hein, however, Kafkaesque existence is no longer a matter of allegory; it has...