The Cannibal is a novel written by John Hawkes. Released in 1949, it tells of Germany throughout the first and second World Wars.
Characters[]
- Zizendorf - the narrator of the first and last parts of the novel
- Leevey - an American overseer
- Herman - the owner of a tavern
- Ernst - the son of Herman
- Stella - Herman's beloved
- Cromwell - a British traitor, or possibly a spy
rest to be added
Publisher's summary[]
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
See also[]
| Title | Author | Release date | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Lime Twig | John Hawkes | 1961 | A novel by the same author with similar themes |
| Gravity's Rainbow | Thomas Pynchon | 1973 | A novel which was possibly inspired by this novel |
| The Tin Drum | Günter Grass | 1959 | A novel which similarly examines the Nazi regime |
| Winter | Len Deighton | 1987 | A novel which similarly examines the Nazi regime |
| HHhH | Laurence Binet | 2010 | A novel which similarly examines the Nazi regime |
| Europe Central | William T. Vollmann | 2005 | A novel which similarly examines the Nazi regime |