What would have happened if Adolf Hitler had been accepted to the Vienna School of Art? If someone had recognized his creative gifts? One such small event may have changed one life, that of the shy, fervent young Adolf, but as Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt demonstrates in his provocative and disturbing novel, it could also have altered the course of history.
Vienna, 1910. The young Adolf is accepted into art school. Freed from his complexes by a certain Dr. Freud, he dreams of a life devoted to art and women. Later, Paris’s Montparnasse in the 1920's will satisfy that dream when he meets Picasso, Breton, the Surrealists and a certain girl from La Rotonde... Examining all the possibilities, the author invites us to explore the two sides of the coin: on one Hitler, the future inhuman dictator; on the other his alter ego, an imaginary Adolf, young artist deciding after psychoanalysis to embrace a poor but passionate life in Vienna, then later Paris in the Bohemian 20's.