In the face of this catastrophe, Cohen has sometimes invoked an obsessive and unsettling fascination with totalitarian control. One of his books of poetry is entitled Flowers for Hitler; in The Favorite Game, his first novel, Cohen's youthful Jewish protagonists play Nazi torture games where they take turns stripping naked and whipping one another with red string, and they fantasize about delivering Fuhrer-like speeches and inciting crowds to violence through mass hypnotism.
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