Heinrich Theodor Böll (December 21, 1917 – July 16, 1985) was one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers. Böll was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1967 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972.

Editorial ReviewsReviewThe phenomenon of modern terrorism has, as a subject, begun to appeal to serious fiction writers: Moravia, Mary McCarthy. But its handling so far has been unsure - perhaps because novelists generally have been trying to project themselves into the terrorists' heads, to work from inside that mentality. What Bll does here, then, is the exact opposite: we are clapped into the security-mad prison of the terrorists' potential victims. Fritz Tolm is an aged, liberal, West German newspaper magnate; he's just been elected the head of an industrial-organization that, for all intents and purposes, functions as a second German government. His former daughter-in-law, however, is living in Turkey with a Baader-Meinhof-like terrorist named Beverloh (himself an old Tolm-family protege). And threats on the lives of the whole Tolm clan have been coming explicitly, steadily. Thus, Tolm, his wife, son Herbert, son Rolf and family, daughter Sabine and family - they all live smothered under surveillance, the efficiency of which is Teutonic to the point of absurdity: no one can move, talk, laugh, or cry without it being recorded, noted; they are protected, above all, from their own lapses. So, of course, in separate ways, they feed on themselves: son Rolf (once a political activist himself, now finding himself being protected from what he once was and perhaps still is) on his wasted promise; Tolm on the doomed hypocrisies of his unwanted industrial power; Sabine - most poignantly of all perhaps - on her need for love. (She finds this love with a conservative Catholic family man who is - what else? - her chief guard.) And, in this slow cooker, Boll sweats out extraordinary levels of paradox: Catholicism, the sexual revolution, technological paralysis, German historical crime (the penalties for which emerge in the least expected ways). Yet, though knotted with pain and intellect, this novel is - on the simplest, most immediate terms - a deeply compelling story. Will or will not the Tolms be killed? And if so, might they not at the end be grateful? The suspense is a high-tension wire, wholly dependent on the cruel waiting everyone must do (and its faintly incestuous nature); a large cast of characters - the family, neighbors, the industrialists, the police - is kept beautifully controlled. And the book begins as psychological case-study, turns into political history, then glidingly returns to psychology again - like Stendhal. Easily the strongest response to modern terrorism by a serious novelist: an artful, gripping novel (in a superb translation) - one of Boll's very finest. (Kirkus Reviews) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.Language NotesText: English (translation)Original Language: German