No career in modern American letters is at once so brilliant varied and controversial as that of Norman Mailer In a span of more than six decades Mailer has searched into subjects ranging from World War II to Ancient Egypt from the march on the Pentagon to Marilyn Monroe from Henry Miller and Mohammad Ali to Jesus Christ Now in The Castle in the Forest his first major work of fiction in more than a decade Mailer offers what may be his consummate literary endeavor He has set out to explore the evil of Adolf Hitler The narrator a mysterious SS man who is later revealed to be an exceptional presence gives us young Adolf from birth as well as Hitlers father and mother his sisters and brothers and the intimate details of his childhood and adolescenceA tapestry of unforgettable characters The Castle in the Forest delivers its playful twists and surprises with astonishing insight into the nature of the struggle between good and evil that exists in us all At its core is a hypothesis that propels this novel and makes it a work of stunning originality Now on the eve of his eighty-fourth birthday Norman Mailer may well be saying more than he ever has before.
