SOURCE: A review of The Tunnel, in Antioch Review, Vol. 53, No. 3, Summer, 1995, pp. 380-1.

In the following review, Percesepe provides a summary of The Tunnel and comments on its critical controversy.

Having completed his magnum opus, Guilt & Innocence in Hitler's Germany, William Frederick Kohler, distinguished professor of history at a distinguished Indiana University, sits in his chair, intending to write an introduction. Blocked, he writes instead a history of history, or better a history of the historian-as-liar, lout, and loser. Fearing his wife will discover it, he hides the new manuscript by slipping it into the pages of his book. Meanwhile, he begins digging a tunnel out from the basement of his house.

He is not a nice man, this Kohler. He speaks with the volume turned up. He lies like a rug and his sins are not small. He gives new meaning to the phrase “unreliable narrator...