The Tunnel: A Novel

Kellermann, Bernhard, 1879-1951Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 4.0
Word count
657K words
Chapters
66

Tags

Foreign Language Books Foreign Literature Engineering FeatTransatlantic TunnelHuman AmbitionTechnological UtopiaEnsemble NarrativeIndustrial AgeGerman LiteratureSocial Observation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Der Tunnel: Roman by Bernhard KellermannAuthor: Kellermann, Bernhard, 1879-1951,Language: German, Class: PT: Language and Literatures: Germanic, Scandinavian, and Icelandic literatures, Release Date: Dec 23, 2013

Editor's review

Der Tunnel is one of Kellermann's most celebrated novels. Centered on a transatlantic undersea tunnel project, it interweaves technical ambition, capital operations, and the fate of ordinary workers. Its most striking feature is the large-scale portrayal of an engineering community: engineers, workers, financiers, and the media, each with their own expectations and anxieties, form a cross-section of society at the dawn of modernity. It combines the exuberance of technological utopia with a sober examination of capital frenzy and engineering risk, and it reads as anything but dated. The language is German, and the narrative has many threads, making it a suitable choice for German learners seeking a long-form challenge, as well as for readers interested in industrial literature, the history of technology, and social imagination. As you read, pay attention to the tension between the "tunnel" as a symbol of progress and its human cost—a theme that still resonates in infrastructure debates today.

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Reading tips

  1. Familiarize yourself with the historical background of the transatlantic tunnel idea before entering the text; this will help you grasp the weight of the engineering narrative more quickly.
  2. Make a character relationship chart distinguishing the three threads of engineers, capital, and workers to avoid getting lost in the ensemble narrative.
  3. After each section, note how "progress" and "cost" are concretely manifested in the plot, building your own thematic notes.
  4. German learners can first read a Chinese translation or synopsis to establish the framework, then return to the original for close reading of key chapters.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66

FAQ

How difficult is the German in this book? It is early twentieth-century German literature, with long sentences and period-colored vocabulary; it is not an introductory text. A reading level of B2 or above is recommended, or familiarize yourself with the plot through a translation before reading the original.
Is the novel mainly about technology or about people? Both, but the emphasis is more on society and characters. The tunnel project is the framework that drives the plot; the real focus is the desires, conflicts, and fates of engineers, workers, capitalists, and the public in the face of a huge undertaking.
Why is it said to remain relevant today? Because its core questions—the relationship between technical ambition and capital frenzy, and between engineering progress and the cost borne by ordinary workers—are still common in contemporary large-scale infrastructure construction and public debate, making comparisons easy to draw while reading.

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About the author

Kellermann, Bernhard, 1879-1951 Author

Bernhard Kellermann (1879–1951) was a German-language writer about whose life little is publicly known in China, and available information remains limited. The library holds eight of his works, including Der Tunnel, Das Meer, Ingeborg, Der Tor, Der 9. November, Die Heiligen, Yester und Li, and Schwedenklees Erlebnis. These titles suggest that he wrote both novels and narrative works, with themes ranging from engineering and social imagination to the sea and nature, love and inner longing, and history and the changes of an era. His writing emphasizes plot development and the fate of his characters, with a clear style characteristic of early twentieth-century German fiction. Works such as Der Tunnel earned him a measure of influence and secured him a place in German literary history.