Welcome to one of the longest nights in world literature. The time is April 1945, the third Germany, already almost completely occupied by the Allies, is overseen by a single American on a motorcycle, and in the town of Spitzen am Dain a conspiracy to revive the nation is brewing... What kind of nation will it be, will the conspirators be able to take power into their own hands? And, importantly, who is the ogre of the novel's title? John Hawkes (1925–1998) himself fought in World War II, studied under Vladimir Nabokov and was inspired by his works - as well as the works of William Faulkner, Franz Kafka and Djuna Barnes. In the novel “The Cannibal” (1949), which became one of the most iconic books of American literature of the 20th century, the peculiarities of Nabokov’s vision are manifested as in few places. For Thomas Pynchon, in turn, "The Ogre" became a source of inspiration for the Zone in "Gravity's Rainbow" and Europe before the outbreak of the First World War. John Hawkes' novel "The Ogre" - an important link between modernism and postmodernism in world literature - is published in Russian for the first time.