Who was Adolf Hitler? It’s a question writers have been trying to answer for more than sixty years. But after thousands of biographies, histories, novels, and films, many fundamental questions remain: How do we explain Hitler’s hatred? Where did it come from? Could it happen again?
Norman Mailer sets out to respond to these and other crucial aspects of Hitler’s personality in his compulsively readable new novel. Spanning three generations, and a hundred years of history, the book brings to life the Hitlers - grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and, ultimately, young Adolf - in an energetic and wildly entertaining family saga. Mailer recounts the marriages, incestuous couplings, estrangements, afflictions, and deaths that lead to the birth of young Adolf in 1889. Told in the voice of a mysterious (and unreliable) narrator, this playful yet profound novel blends fact and fiction in a stirring family tale that will cause the reader to re-examine his preconceived ideas about Hitler and the nature of his evil.
- 'One must agree with Mailer: helping us to understand this "most mysterious human being of the century" is indeed a timely undertaking… Keeping the paradox infernal-banal alive in all its anguishing inscrutability may be the ultimate achievement of this very considerable contribution to historical fiction' SUNDAY TIMES
- ‘Mailer has become... a great American icon who is venerated and reviled but impossible to ignore’ OBSERVER
Trade Paperback
Published 15/02/2007