The Castle in the Forest (Random House)
In the second of this two-part conversation about the bureaucratic, dim-witted culture that characterized the German provinces of Hitler's childhood, Mailer reveals that his narrator, an assistant to the devil, is himself a bureaucrat. Bureaucracy becomes the model for the world of this novel, down to the smallest detail—the beehives kept by Hitler's father. Mailer waxes hilarious about the sexual behavior of bees.
Intellectual, accessible, and provocative literary conversations.