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The Castle in the Forest

A Novel

By Norman Mailer

(8)

| Hardcover | 9780394536491

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Book Description

No career in modern American letters is at once so brilliant, varied, and controversial as that of Norman Mailer. In a span of more than six decades, Mailer has searched into subjects ranging from World War II to Ancient Egypt, from the march on the Pentagon to Marilyn Monroe, from Henry Miller and Continue

No career in modern American letters is at once so brilliant, varied, and controversial as that of Norman Mailer. In a span of more than six decades, Mailer has searched into subjects ranging from World War II to Ancient Egypt, from the march on the Pentagon to Marilyn Monroe, from Henry Miller and Mohammad Ali to Jesus Christ. Now, in The Castle in the Forest, his first major work of fiction in more than a decade, Mailer offers what may be his consummate literary endeavor: He has set out to explore the evil of Adolf Hitler.

The narrator, a mysterious SS man who is later revealed to be an exceptional presence, gives us young Adolf from birth, as well as Hitler’s father and mother, his sisters and brothers, and the intimate details of his childhood and adolescence.

A tapestry of unforgettable characters, The Castle in the Forest delivers its playful twists and surprises with astonishing insight into the nature of the struggle between good and evil that exists in us all. At its core is a hypothesis that propels this novel and makes it a work of stunning originality. Now, on the eve of his eighty-fourth birthday, Norman Mailer may well be saying more than he ever has before.

Critics

  • Devil's plaything

    The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer 496pp, Little, Brown, £17.99 Modern thinking would have us believe that no one is born bad. An infant doesn't come into the world endowed with a predisposition towards cruelty and murder; such base attributes ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Maestro of the Human Ego

    There is a semi-harrowing, careening, self-burlesquing moment that occurs deep in Norman Mailer’s “Armies of the Night,” his third-person account of taking part in the massive protest against the Vietnam War in Washington in October 1967 — not only a ... (read full critics)

    nytimes published on Sat, 18 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

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  • This was my first Mailer novel, and from what I've read - both between the covers of the book as well as the reviews here on Amazon - I chose poorly.

    We're led to believe this is a story of Hitler's formative years. When you look at the bibliography, it seems Mailer intended (and produced) so ... (continue)

    This was my first Mailer novel, and from what I've read - both between the covers of the book as well as the reviews here on Amazon - I chose poorly.

    We're led to believe this is a story of Hitler's formative years. When you look at the bibliography, it seems Mailer intended (and produced) something of a historical fiction. However, while we see much of Hitler's ancestors (particularly his father and his difficulties with the zipper), and a little of the young "Adi", it almost seems to me this is more of an musing on the workings of good and evil - God and the Devil, from the Devil's perspective - with an infamous product of this struggle as context.

    If I were to Twitter a riddle regarding Castle in the Forest, I might write, "What do you get when you cross The Rolling Stones (Sympathy for the Devil), Freud and Oedipus Rex?"

    Is this helpful?

    Andyberschauer said on May 2, 2009 | Add your feedback

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9780394536491 Hardcover -- $12.99 ebooks.com
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