Fiction. Thirty years in the making, William Gass's second novel first appeared on the literary scene in 1995, at which time it was promptly hailed as an indisputable masterpiece. The story of a middle-aged professor who, upon completion of a massive historical study, Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany, finds himself writing a novel about his own life instead of the introduction to his magnum opus. THE TUNNEL meditates on history, hatred, unhappiness, and, above all else, language. "The haunting evocations of a small-town childhood [are] so sensually rich in detail that the prose is sometimes hypnotic...THE TUNNEL confronts the questions whether the savagery of the 20th century can still be encompassed by an art that is willing to dig deep enough"--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, New York Times.