Mad, bad and brilliant: Jesus Christ Kinski by Benjamin Myers, reviewed
Klaus Kinski was one of Germany’s most celebrated postwar actors. Although he appeared in more than 130 films, including five for the director Werner Herzog, he began his career on the stage, returning in 1971 to perform a monologue, Jesus Christus Erlöser, before an audience of 6,000 in West Berlin. Benjamin Myers has long been fascinated by the surviving footage of Kinski’s performance and, in his latest novel, Jesus Christ Kinski, he attempts to recreate it on the page. He divides the book into two ‘acts’. The first consists of Kinski’s interior monologue as he struggles with both his own demons and an increasingly hostile audience. In the second, an
