William Gass's 'The Tunnel' Finally Published in French After 12-Year Wait

William Gass's monumental novel 'The Tunnel' has been published in French translation by Claro, appearing in the new collection 'lot 49' at Éditions du Cherche Midi. The translation is the first worldwide, as the book had been rejected by major Parisian publishers for being too voluminous, disorienting, difficult, and disturbing. The novel, originally published in the US in 1995, took Gass thirty years to write. The narrator, historian William Frederick Kohler, has just completed his magnum opus 'Guilt and Innocence in Hitler's Germany' but finds himself unable to write the introduction. Instead, he begins to confess his story, revealing himself as an anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi historian. The narrative becomes a powerful stream of memory, filled with detritus, disappointments, resentment, repressed violence, shameful acts, and moments of beauty and emotion. Gass's writing is characterized by its dazzling style, typographic play, and musical phrasing, reminiscent of Sterne and Maurice Roche. The novel is a critique of society and its foundations: desire, hatred of the other, and murder. Gass explores what he calls 'fascism of the heart,' which arises not from political ideology but from the primal core of hatred within an individual. The translation by Claro is praised for rendering Gass's complex syntax and typographic experiments effectively.