A literary event—the long-awaited novel, almost two decades in work, by the acclaimed author of The Tunnel.

“Middle C takes its place in that great line of modern novels about inauthenticity. . . . However, there is nothing sham to Gass’s art: It’s not just dazzling, it’s the real thing.” —The Washington Post

Middle C follows Joseph Skizzen, who as a child flees Nazi-era Austria with his family, only to lose his father under mysterious circumstances in wartime London. Resettled in small-town Ohio, Joseph grows into a quiet, unremarkable man on the surface: a piano player, a teacher, a son left behind. But beneath that life, he constructs another identity, one obsessed with humanity’s darkest crimes and a strange personal project he calls the Inhumanity Museum.

As memory, imagination, and reality blur, Joseph begins to question who he truly is, and whether any version of the self can be innocent.

Spanning from World War II Europe to postwar America, William Gass weaves a daring, inventive narrative that blends music, philosophy, and language into a powerful exploration of identity, morality, and the stories we tell ourselves.

Middle C is a bold, unconventional novel that challenges traditional storytelling while delivering a deeply human portrait of guilt and self-creation.
From one of America’s most celebrated literary voices, this is a work of rare ambition, haunting, intricate, and unforgettable. “Middle C takes its place in that great line of modern novels about inauthenticity. . . . However, there is nothing sham to Gass’s art: It’s not just dazzling, it’s the real thing.” —The Washington Post

“A world-devouring novel. . . . Of all living literary figures, William Gass may count as the most daringly scathing and most assertively fecund: in language, in ideas, in intricacy of form; above all in relentless fury. . . . This unquiet bildungsroman is designed to detonate its mild, middling title. . . . Exhilaratingly ingenious . . . unexpected and dizzying.” —Cynthia Ozick, The New York Times Book Review

“Rhythmic and sonic. . . . A final statement of Gass’s belief in the sound of literary language.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London)
 
“Gass is a magician of the word, the writer of a prose so rich that it makes Vladimir Nabokov’s seem impoverished. . . . Metaphors leap through hoops, similes elicit oohs and ahs, and daredevil paragraphs bring down the house. There’s never any fat or slack to his sentences, though sometimes they unfold quietly, almost slyly, until blossoming into little stories all their own.” —The Washington Post

“Middle C is driven by plot, by a largely comic chain of cause and consequence. . . . Skizzen proves as befuddled an academic wanderer as anyone this country has seen since Nabokov’s Timofey Pnin.” —The New York Review of Books

“A mischievous variation on the moral dilemmas raised in Gass’s The Tunnel . . . In this exuberantly learned bildungsroman—this torrent of curious facts and arch commentary, puns and allusions—internationally lauded virtuoso Gass reflects on humanity’s crimes and marvels, creating his funniest and most life-embracing book yet.” —Booklist (starred)

“Extraordinary. . . . A religious allegory and a philosophical meditation on language and consciousness as the source of evil.” —The Boston Globe

“Gass orchestrates his fiction with thematic elements as a composer might a symphony.” —Timeout  New York

“Exhilarating . . .dazzling.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Epic . . . crazily rich with thought . . . remarkably detailed. . . . Gass beautifully coaxes the unheard music from a seemingly muted life. . . . The unprecedented work of a master.” —Publishers Weekly 

“A masterly work of language and imagery from one of America’s most celebrated authors.” —Library Journal (starred)

“Engaging, melancholy. . . . Gass remains a master of apt metaphors, graceful sentences and a flinty, unforgiving brand of humor; it may be the most entertaining novel you’ll read that half wishes humanity was wiped off the map. . . . Gass, now 88, clearly has endings on his mind, which he addresses with fearsome brio and wit.” —Kirkus