The Clairvoyant: The Man Who Predicted Hitler’s Rise to Power
The Clairvoyant: The Man Who Predicted Hitler’s Rise to Power tells the true story of Eric Jan Hanussen, one of the greatest stars of the 1930s Berlin entertainment world. The narrator of this fictionalised account is a young Spanish journalist, José Ortega, who is posted to Berlin in 1932 to report on the turbulent political scene. Hanussen is a stage clairvoyant, who takes the reporter under his wing.
The original Spanish-language novel, El mentalista de Hitler (2016) is described as a ‘historical noir’ novel from Posadas, a Uruguayan author, and closely based on Erik Jan Hanussen’s true biography.
Hanussen was a hit at Berlin’s La Scala, where he performed a mind reading and hypnosis act which made him a star. He became close to high-ranking Nazis and predicted that Adolf Hitler would become Chancellor of Germany, a prospect that, at that time, no-one could envisage. He is credited with teaching Hitler techniques to control crowds using gestures and dramatic pauses.
In the novel, as in life, Hanussen becomes more and more celebrated as his predictions come true. He is depicted as a chilling, arrogant and tyrannical enigma. But his rise in fame and influence put him on a dangerous path, with conflict and enemies just around the corner. The novel captures the hedonism of Berlin in the dying days of the Weimar Republic and a sinister foretaste of the horrors readers know are to come.
Ortega makes for a sympathetic if naïve narrator, enabling the reader to be thrust right into the heart of the action. Posadas’ research is meticulous, with the bulk of characters taken from real life. After the story reaches its inevitable conclusion, the author reveals what happened to them. It is a compelling and distressing tale.
