The Fool in Christ Emanuel Quint Gerhart Hauptmann 1926 English Hardcover

Written by Gerhart Hauptmann Translated by Thomas Seltzer Published by The Viking Press NY Preface by Ernest Boyd Published in 1926 Not my book review, but found this one, by "Richard": This is truly one of the oddest books I've ever come across, in my long experience of odd books. It is written by Hauptmann who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1912 (before he wrote this) for his many plays. The book is about the adventures of a man who believes that he is a son of God and wanders through Germany giving testimony of Christ. I've never read anything like it although parts of it remind me of the Journal of George Fox, the founder of Quakerism and the sense of the book reminded me a little of Dreyer's movie "Ordet." But within literature, no - it's not really like Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot", although it would seems like it would be. While Quint is clearly insane (in a way that George Fox is not), the effect he has on people is quite powerful, and by far the most interesting part of the book is the way his simplistic (yet in a way profound) views of Christianity interact with things like socialism and more traditional Christianity. The author is unafraid to put his poor character in all sorts of difficult situations. The tremendous sympathy shown by the author for Quint is also surprising and greatly adds to the book - he is not mocked. There's also a powerful realism to the book, and interesting parallels between Quint's actions and those of the socialist reformers (refer