A literary event--the long-awaited novel, almost two decades in work, by one of the most revered American writers of our time, author of the universally acclaimed The Tunnel ("The most beautiful, most complex, most disturbing novel to be published in my lifetime." --Michael Silverblatt, Los Angeles Times; "An extraordinary achievement"--Michael Dirda, The Washington Post); Omensetter's Luck ("The most important work of fiction by an American in this literary generation" --Richard Gilman, The New Republic); Willie Masters' Lonesome Wife; and In The Heart of the Heart of the Country ("These stories scrape the nerve and pierce the heart. They also replenish the language." --Eliot Fremont-Smith, The New York Times).

Middle C tells the story of this journey--an investigation into the nature of human identity and the ways in which each of us is several selves, and whether any one self is more genuine than another.It begins in Graz, Austria, in 1938. Joseph Skizzen's father, pretending to be Jewish, leaves his country for England with his wife and two children to avoid any connection with the Nazis, whom he foresees will soon take over his homeland. In London with his family for the duration of the war, he disappears under mysterious circumstances. The family is relocated to a small town in Ohio where Joseph Skizzen grows up, becomes a decent amateur piano player, in part to cope with the abandonment of his father, and creates as well a fantasy self--a professor with a fantasy goal: to establish the Inhumanity Museum. Skizzen has trained himself to accept guilt for crimes against humanity and protects himself with the creation of a secret self that is able to remain sinless.