The Cannibal

by John Hawkes

Book Overview

"No synopsis conveys the quality of this now famous novel about an hallucinated Germany in collapse after World War II. John Hawkes, in his search for a means to transcend outworn modes of fictional realism, has discovered a a highly original technique for objectifying the perennial degradation of mankind within a context of fantasy.... Nowhere has the nightmare of human terror and the deracinated sensibility been more consciously analyzed than in...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811200639
• ISBN13: 9780811200639
• Release Date: January 1962
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 202 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Like Di Lillo, Pynchon, Auster, Hannah, Boyle, Coover--One of the Greatest

Three of the reviewers simply don't know what they're talking about. If they were writing about art, they'd probably say that Picasso can't draw.

Underestimated Genius

John Hawkes is a master of allusion and sordid subtleties. In *The Cannibal*, Hawkes' apocalyptic vision of post-war Germany attacks the reader in the form of an ever-deepening chill. Readers of Gunter Grass's *The Tin Drum* will find an interesting parallel here in Hawkes' sterile world. This man is one of the greatest, most difficult writers of the twentieth century. I also highly recommend *The Lime Twig.*