"The Castle in the Forest" - Mailer's first novel in 10 years

"The Castle in the Forest" - Mailer's first novel in 10 years is not just the almost superhumanly detached fulfillment of the somewhat depressed boast he made nearly half a century ago in "Advertisements for Myself": "I wish to attempt an entrance into the mysteries of murder, suicide, incest, orgy, orgasm and Time." This remarkable novel about the young Adolf Hitler, his family and their shifting circumstances, is Mailer's most perfect apprehension of the absolutely alien.

No wonder it is narrated by a devil. Mailer doesn't inhabit these historical figures so much as possess them.

In "The Castle in the Forest," the devil-narrator - who is living in the body of an SS man named Dieter - tells a little tale about the tale he is telling. "It is more than a memoir and certainly has to be most curious as a biography since it is as privileged as a novel. I do possess the freedom to enter many a mind." Those two sentences form the crux of Mailer's originality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/21/books/review/Siegel.t.html?8bu&emc=bu

via NYT