When we first encounter Heinrich Hampel, in 1962, he is thirty, an affable womanizer in West Germany whose job as a bed salesman affords him continual opportunity. After running up big debts, he flees to the East, where he zigzags from delivering bread and dealing black-market goods to being an informer for the Stasi. Heinrich is a likable scoundrel, and it is easy to see why the book was a best-seller in Germany. Still, the author's insistence that his protagonist symbolize every single aspect of postwar Germany—in the manner of Grass's Oskar Matzerath or Fassbinder's Maria Braun—leaves Heinrich even more of a cipher than the allegory requires.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
“We have finally found a voice for the generation that grew up in the sixties. A Peter Handke, Heinrich Böll, Heiner Müller for our generation.” —Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung
“One of the most beautiful, comic, and sad German books in a long time.” —Der Spiegel
“The Adventures of a Bed Salesman is not just an off beat, very well written novel. It is also a bold book. Top-class entertainment.”—Die Ziet
“One of the most beautiful, comic, and sad German books in a long time.” —Der Spiegel
“The Adventures of a Bed Salesman is not just an off beat, very well written novel. It is also a bold book. Top-class entertainment.”—Die Ziet
See all Editorial Reviews