CYCLORAMA
By Adam Langer
338 pages. Bloomsbury. $27.
As the old saying goes, comedy equals tragedy plus time. Adam Langer’s new novel, “Cyclorama,” significantly complicates that equation.
Superimposed on a high school’s theatrical production of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” a somewhat saccharine adaptation of the best-selling book that appeared on Broadway and won a Pulitzer, the novel is structured, like the play, in two acts. The first takes place in 1982, when Holocaust remembrance was a particular priority of American culture: Many survivors were still alive, a new generation needed to be educated and everyone was still gathering around the same electronic hearth.
The second act jumps to 2016 and — against a backdrop of anti-immigration, neo-Nazism and media atomization — is like one of the more darkly comic class reunions imaginable. (P.S.A. for those who’ve never attended one: They’re all darkly comic).
