The Tunnel

Perhaps even more chillingly relevant today than it was thirty years ago, this gripping and deeply personal interrogation of fascism to print at last in a remarkable full-color anniversary edition.

, William H. Gass’ colossal second novel, thundered onto the literary scene after three decades at the typewriter. Hailed by many as an indisputable masterpiece, reviled by others as a suffocating and overwhelming experiment, has been voraciously studied by readers ever since. The story of a middle-aged history professor who, upon nearing completion of his magnum opus, "Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany," finds himself implicated in his own research, and begins to write a parallel work of history: his own life’s story. Fearing that someone might find these confessional pages, he begins to dig a tunnel out from beneath his home in an attempt to hide, or escape, from the past that he has so diligently cataloged.

many things: an awe-inspiring and apocalyptic novel that reckons with the accumulating brutality of the twentieth century; a mirror, asking readers to confront their own potential for darkness; and the crowning achievement by one of America’s great prose stylists.