The Cannibal: A Novel

by John Hawkes

Overview

The Cannibal was John Hawkes's first novel, published in 1949.

"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 The Cannibal. Yet one is aware throughout that such analysis proceeds only in terms of a resolutely committed humanism." - Hayden Carruth

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811200639
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	01/17/1962
Pages:	202
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)
Lexile:	1270L (what's this?)

About the Author

John Hawkes (1925–1998) was a postmodern novelist born in Stamford, Connecticut, and educated at Harvard University. He was noted for his unconventional style and views on the creation of literature and was admired by Flannery O’Connor, Robert Penn Warren, Saul Bellow, Anthony Burgess, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Donald Barthelme.

Editorial Reviews

"John Hawkes is an extraordinary writer. I have always admired his books. They should be more widely read."

Saul Bellow

"He has his own vision of things—fantastic, nightmarish, flickering with disturbing truths, the ordinary grown ominous—and knows how to compel us to enter the world of that vision."

Robert Penn Warren