The Tunnel

The Tunnel

While writing the introduction to his magnum opus, a moral history of Hitler's Germany, a middle-aged historian finds himself writing instead a history of himself and secretly digging a tunnel out of his own basement. Reprint. A strange and monumental novel that took William Gass three decades to write. When a Midwestern historian sits down to write the introduction to his magnum opus study of the Third Reich, he instead writes a chaotic, obscure and labrynthine exploration of his personal history. Then he begins digging a tunnel from the basement of his house. The writing, the digging, and the reader's reading blend into one profound meditation on history, evil, the living and the dead. PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist. Maddening, enthralling, appalling, coarse, romantic, sprawling, bawling... -- New York Times Book Review From one of the most important American writers of our time, a novel thirty years in the making, exploring evil, history, the living, and the dead. "The most beautiful, most complex, most disturbing novel to be published in my lifetime."-- Los Angeles Times Book Review