From Publishers Weekly
At one extreme of this collection of 67 fiction pieces by the late Nobel laureate are some stories so brief and fragmentary as to seem afterthoughts. At the other are the novellas, several of which, including The Soldier's Legacy (published separately in 1985), have the weight and density of novels. The total range is widefrom droll and facetious, mordant and caustic, as Boll could be when observing the grubby lives of his compatriots, to the brooding intensity of the pieces haunted by the Hitler era, telling of his own experiences as a draftee in the Wehrmacht (thought he was a Catholic pacifist) and as a prisoner of war. Better, a character says in a kind of summing-up, to be "a dead Jew than a live German." If the lesser pieces are forgettably slight, overall the writer's distinctive virtues prevail: his wide culture and cultivated intelligence; his gift for parable and fable; his humane sensibility and eye for the mindless cruelties and desolations of war. And, perhaps above all, his talentas a character remarks, "for turning everything into a symbolic event." February 28
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Until his recent death, Boll was the preeminent chronicler of Germany's agonizing rebirth in the latter 20th century. His writings pick at his country's freshly healed wounds, examining the alienation he and his fellow Germans shared both during and after the war. Renowned for his novels and honored with the Nobel Prize, Boll also transmuted his experiences into numerous short stories that rank among the genre's finest. Presented here are sixty-two of these gems and five novellas in an important volume displaying the growth of writer and country from war's dark tragedy to peace's black humor. Fifteen of these stories are translated into English for the first time from their original German, and as always Vennewitz's translation is outstanding. This is essential for all European literature collections. Paul E. Hutchison, English Dept., Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
