Guided Tours of Hell: Novellas – Witty, Transgressive Fiction About Americans Abroad and Historical Tragedy

by Francine Prose

“In a style that is brisk, witty, richly detailed, and suffused with a wry subtlety, Prose offers an astonishingly accurate anatomy of the human mind.”— Elle Writing with the elegance and humor that have brought her work international acclaim, bestselling author Francine Prose has created an exhilaratingly transgressive fiction that examines the difficulty of feeling the "appropriate emotions" about the greatest historical tragedy or the smallest personal sorrow. The less-than-innocents abroad in these daring stories are Americans in Europe involved in what turns out to be trips that change forever their ideas about history, politics, and sex. In the title novella, Landau, a third-rate American playwright, attends a literary conference in Prague, where an organized group excursion to a former concentration camp degenerates into a battle of wills and an exercise in egomania and public humiliation. Nina, the heroine of the second novella, "Three Pigs in Five Days," is sent to Paris to write an article for her lover's travel journal, a dizzying, erotic pilgrimage that forces her to see how sex has distorted her view of the world. An audacious book, Guided Tours of Hell dares to say the unsayable and to tip our most sacred cows.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Literary Fiction, Novella, Contemporary, Holocaust, Literature

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Francine Prose is the author of twenty works of fiction. Her novel A Changed Man won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. The recipient of numerous grants and honors, including a Guggenheim and a Fulbright, a Director's Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, Prose is a former president of PEN American Center, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her most recent book is Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Have you ever known a person who has lived through hell, whose birth dumped him into unfair circumstances that might kill others, but somehow he survived? Not only did he survive, but in later life he made a career out of having survived, exaggerating and feeding off the drama, engendering politically correct reverence from society. But he treats people horribly, is arrogant, self-involved, and manipulative. And privately you watch and think: That’s who he really is. That’s who he would be no matter what had happened to him. He’s a liar. And he’s better than I am because I wouldn’t have survived.

Guided Tours of Hell, the first novella in this seething collection of two, is the story of such people. Fittingly, the First International Kafka Congress gathers for a fieldtrip to a concentration camp in Prague, where rivaling writers have it out with each other and thrash around in the hell soup that is the human race’s constant competition for nobility and importance. The writing is hot and rich. And the truth is told.

In the second novella, Three Pigs in Five Days, Nina, a young American writer for a magazine about France, follows her American boss boyfriend, Leo, down into the Paris Catacombs—narrow, dark spiraling stairs and hallways deep into the ground where bones are piled high. The story is a bit like that scene in that it is the long, detailed account of Nina’s obsession—she calls it love—with Leo, a man who alternately seduces and rejects her. This is an iconic story, but one I have gotten bored with, and it is a testament to Francine Prose’s writing that I stuck with it. Even though it went on too long for my taste with repeated obsessive thoughts exhaustively recounted, the narrative is good and the fact that Nina has enough self-awareness to “watch her thoughts,” in yogic/Buddhist terms, and hold onto a modicum of healthy skepticism about her own distorted beliefs kept me with it to the end.

[Mary Lins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm so glad I finally got around to Francine Prose's, "Guided Tours of Hell", two novellas that epitomize Prose's talent for searing satire and gob-smacking irony. It's been sitting in my "To Be Read" stack for ages.

"Isn't there something by definition obscene about guided tours of hell - except, of course, if you're Dante?"

"What IS the tourist etiquette for the shaving room at the death camp?"

In the title novella, two aging, male writers clash egos at a Kafka Conference while touring a death camp in Prague. All of Prose's writing skills are on display here!

"Three Pigs in Five Days" follows American travel writer, Nina, around Paris, as she realizes that she has a classic Bad Boyfriend, and that many famous woman have fallen into the same trap. Wondering what she is going to do with this new-found self-awareness is what kept me turning the pages.

Warning, there is nothing Politically Correct in these novellas - that's why they are so good! For example, in "Three Pigs in Five Days", Prose explores the politically incorrect, but often true, reality that women can, and often do, process sex without commitment differently than men do. And that's just one example.

[Amarah H-S]

sex and death man!

both of these novellas are smart, sarcastic, thoughtful, entertaining, and — in their own ways — super subversive. i loved thinking through the ways they connected to each other, beyond the whole americans in europe thing.

both of the main characters are caught up with stories — stories in culture, stories that other people tell, and, perhaps most importantly, what kind of stories they can tell about themselves. they’re also both writers, naturally.

this book is rich with symbolism, and i had so much fun with the puzzle pieces. and because both protagonists are so obsessed with telling their own stories, they fixate on the symbols just as much as you, the reader. you’re wondering together what it all means.

lots of fascinating and unlikeable people. lots of images, metaphors, myths, stories. so good.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Francine Prose is bad – which means she's very good. These two novellas about Not-Quite-Innocents Abroad (the other one is called, deliciously, "Three Pigs in Five Days") are as sly and anti-sentimental as only a writer's writer can be. In these two tales, she reminds me of Rachel Ingalls in her wry, less-fantastic mode – by which I mean a high compliment!

[Joan Gelfand · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first introduction to Francine Prose. Though I've read about her in the NYT and other erudite publications, this was my first foray into her work. I love her! She's hard hitting, no BS, gut wrenchingly honest and very funny.

[Andrew Wusler · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really smart, satisfying read.
Both of the stories deal with Americans abroad in Europe for reasons of cultural tourism. Both protagonists grapple with darkness and severity, they see whorehouses, catacombs, animal slaughter, the gas chamber of a concentration camp...
I'm not sure if there's a clear mode to these pieces- that America lacks the tormented past of the dark ages and of the holocaust is likely something to bear in mind. Is there greater freedom to experience the visceral poles abroad?
The fainting and subterranean travels of Dante are also a fun theme Prose scores big points with. Read it.

[Arja Salafranca · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title novella Guided Tours of Hell was disappointing - but the second novella, Three Pigs in Five Days, was an incredible exploration of a doomed relationship. One of the best and most moving novellas I've ever read. Still reeling from its power.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I kept thinking (and waiting) for it to be revealed that Jiri did not really have those experiences...but given how things went, that seems one of the points, as our narrator Landau became more and more unreliable as the story progressed. There is, again, quite a bit here to unpack, about the different types of guilt one can feel about an event: being a European Jew and surviving the camps, or being an American Jew and only hearing about the history, not being touched by it in the same way. The desire to share in an experience, any experience, to reaffirm oneself, especially in the eyes of others.

I read a pdf copy of only "Guided Tour of Hell" provided by my professor. Using this edition for the page count :) (hey, there are quite a few other short stories I have read for this class which were not stand-alone on GR, so this helps even out the score. And this is not even counting all the scholarly articles I'm reading for three other classes!)

[Marija · Rating 2 out of 5]

After slogging through the first novella about a Kafka conference attendee visiting a Nazi death camp, with all the characters in his group unlikeable, I turned to the first page of the second novella, "Three Pigs in Five Days." As in three pigs slaughtered in five days. I abandoned the book after the first paragraph.

If I don't feel something sympathetic for at least one character, I just can't hold on, no matter who intricate the web woven.

[Nick Schroeder · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read. Both novellas were thought provoking. Both involve tourism and bring up questions of what is an appropriate destination for tourists. Do "guided tours" of various hells (concentration camps, cemetery encounters with neo-Nazi skinheads, a prison of the French Revolution Terror) make us more humane, more empathic, less likely to commit the atrocities that they show us? Or do they effect us no more (perhaps less) than a visit to the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre?
I find the narration of "Three Pigs in Five Days" by Nina interesting. An excellent example of how a woman can be trapped in a bad relationship. Nina knows that Leo is a manipulative, controlling, self-centered person — on an intellectual level. But even though she knows that she still can't leave him. She morns their relationship when she thinks he has dumped her. Gives insight into the thinking of an abused woman who refuses to leave a bad relationship.

[Mark O'brien · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually like novellas, but the two in this book were duds.
"Guided Tours of Hell" looked at a group of writers, playwrights and intellectuals who reeked of self-importance, envy and unhappy lives. Were they obsessed with Kafka because they were odd or were they odd because they were obsessed with Kafka? They were unlikeable folks for the most part, but I stayed with the 68-page story because the author, Francine Prose, did a good job of description and made me want to know how the story ended. However, I guess she ran out of gas because it ended with a blah.
I devoted about 68 pages to "Three Pigs in Five Days'' before I decided Ms. Prose wouldn't trick me again. Set in pre-2000 Paris, it seemed to be a tale of a very anxious woman who analyzed her lover far too much. I didn't want to wade through a pile more pages.

[MickPro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two novellas of contemporary life, the past and how it can haunt us to this day.
One involving the Holocaust, and its ability to affect those near it. the second longer story centers on the paranoia of love and potentially losing it. or the allusion that it's strong, perhaps.

or possibly these are primarily about jealousy/envy and how we want what we don't have or perceive we have. and our perception of what may or may not be going on about us.

[Walter Polashenski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found these two stories to be painful to read. The internal dialogue of the characters was so repetitive and so pathetic that I cringed repeatedly. Perhaps the intention of the author. But not pleasurable.
It did get me thinking, and for that reason I can still recommend the stories, particularly the second story.

[Edward Wayland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Francine Prose is a great writer and these stories are inventive, but...I did not like the characters. Alas.

[Isobel · Rating 4 out of 5]

2 novellas full of literary allusions and introspection. The imagery and writing are fairly good. I don't think I will want to read this book again, but am glad that I read it.

[Randall · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories had their moments, but overall I had trouble getting into them and understanding them. The writing was simply beautiful and vivid, however.

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Guided Tours of Hell" was an uncomfortable read for its banality. Perhaps that the author's point: even camp survivors as they live on and age become ordinary people with everyday concerns and petty attitudes. This is supposed to contrast with having "lived through hell" and therefore says something about time, memory, etc. Perhaps a reader remote from the subject (as I am close to it, having studied and worked with Holocaust history and testimonies for 15+ years) would appreciate it better than I did.

"Three Pigs in 5 Days" is far better than its companion (above). Since it takes place in an intense five-day visit to Paris, at first unwillingly unaccompanied and then joined by her employer-lover, I allowed myself to read it in one sitting. By the following morning I'd digested it and kept thinking of what went on: how the reader, like Nina, takes time to compare scenes of how differently she experiences the adventure of foreign travel when she's on her own vs. with her controlling lover whom she's convinced herself she loves obsessively.
N.B. I think when I first read this volume years ago when I was less circumspect, I decided not to read this second novella out of an envious spite of a woman traveling with a savvy, desirable, francophone man picking up the tab, and the other romantic and exciting aspects of the city I chose (in 1976) as the one I most wanted to see if I never had the opportunity for any other. This time I was keenly tuned in to Nina's subjective sense of dissonance, her critical judgments, her agonizing over the relationship - and was far more interested in her deliberations and dawning comprehension of whether the relationship was good for her or not. The Paris sightseeing was interesting as I made mental notes of where I might visit if I go there again - but right now I'm happy to curl up on a chilly night and read this book.

[Bryan Whitehead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually, this is a collection of two novellas by Francine Prose: the relatively brief “Guided Tours of Hell” and the long, meandering “Three Pigs in Five Days.” Both works involve tours of European locales (a concentration camp and Paris, respectively), and both feature collections of petty, pretentious morons that may safely be called Hell at least until a more pejorative term comes along. The problem with Prose (at least in these two and in Hunters and Gatherers, the only samples of her work that I’ve read to date) is that the protagonists of her third person limited omniscient psychological novels are only relative heroes. The author does an artful job of portraying the foibles of effete intellectuals and other undesirables, but the glass through which we view them is almost universally neurotic, dithering, superior only by comparison. Further, we’re brought awkwardly into the narratives, and we leave at equally inopportune moments; the realism of the writing is admirable, but it leaves me wanting a little more. Prose is good at what she does, and it’s amusing in small doses. But it does tend to get old, especially after more than 100 pages with no particular plot or direction in the second tale.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is actually two novellas, Guided Tours of Hell and Three Pigs in Five Days. It's definitely not Prose's best work.

The first novella is shorter and better: a group of Kafka scholars is visiting a concentration camp. Jiri is the star, this jerk who survived a concentration camp, and who probably invented half of the stories he tells about it, but no one dares to call him on it, or point out what an asshole he is, because he's a Holocaust survivor. I liked it, but the ending was kind of unsatisfying.

The other one is about this woman who is pathetically in love with this guy who's kind of a jerk, and it went on too long, but I did like the ending. So there you go.

[Vincent Odhiambo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The overriding impression one gets from Francine Prose, after sifting through the narrative, is a contempt for Charles Fourier and his ilk, she practically pisses all over the notion of strong female characters. Sadly in both stories the women, are cast as hopeless souls constantly yearning for the crutch of a male figure however base the man might be.
Her writing is unmistakably good and this is her only work I have had the chance to go through; not enough to appraise her views on gender and it's trappings.

[Sutter Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Skipped the first, not in mood to visit concentration camp, having done so once, nor was I interested in the petty jealousy of narrator toward a fellow Kafka scholar.
I enjoyed the second novella, Three Pigs in Five Days, more than any other Prose I've read or attempted to read. A good tromp thru Paris. Main character weak, as if written by a man who didn't think much of women. Her insecurities enough to make me scream, altho I could, sorry to say, relate to some of them. Some of the chapters I've read elsewhere, probably in an anthology, possibly in The New Yorker.

[Nan · Rating 3 out of 5]

These two novellas of Americans abroad confront the history of genocide. Reading them was a bit like visiting Dante's circles of hell. You can find your way in, but, unless you're Dante, you'll never find your way out. Prose seems to be condemning humanity to endless tours of hell and endless mind games. Survival will not change or ennoble us. Reading these two stories has not changed or ennobled me.

[Camille Cusumano · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is two novellas, the first shares the book's title. The second one, Three Pigs in Four Days, I loved. Read it in Paris. Nina, the protag, has her brilliant epiphany there in the City of Light on a tour of Bastille-era places. Brilliant character development. Felt as if Prose had experienced this sort of enlightenment in regard to a guy, just as Nina did. We all know a Leo, the antagonist.

[son pham · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is no doubt in my mind that Francine Prose is this generation's female version of Chekov. In both of these stories, what she manages to do "again" is that by the end of the story, there is a realization of "truth" not only to the protagonist of each story but also for ourselves. We learn something about the human condition just as the characters do too.

[Kristin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Neither of the main characters in his novella are remotely likeable, yet you still find yourself rooting for them due to the sheer awfulness of everything else. I found it interesting that both trips took place in Europe -- must one leave the US to find hell?

[Indu · Rating 2 out of 5]

Guided tours through the dark grimy layers of minds. Interesting and dedicated to putting it as it is. It took some time to get used to, but was captivating enough to get me back to where I left it in between the reading.

[Dawn Aschberger · Rating 2 out of 5]

Strange, but highly imaginative. Too imaginative really. And depressing..

[Karen McCamant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two whiny and misanthropic novellas-- great title.

[Selena]

this book is somehow stealing all of the happiness from me. putting it down to find some sunshine and think about good things in life.

[Tori · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's a weird undercurrent of revulsion toward (ostentatiously holocaust-referencing) Jewish men. From unsympathetic (pathetic) protagonists.