BÖLL, Heinrich - Woman in a River Landscape - (Hardcover in Wrapper)

Subtitled 'A Novel in Dialogues and Soliloquies' - Book and wrapper still in very good condition even though it belonged to library before - Translated from the German.    >>>   Heinrich Böll became a full-time writer at the age of 30. His first novel, Der Zug war pünktlich(The Train Was on Time), was published in 1949. Many other novels, short stories, radio plays, and essay collections followed. In 1972 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature "for his writing which through its combination of a broad perspective on his time and a sensitive skill in characterization has contributed to a renewal of German literature." He was the first German-born author to receive the Nobel Prize since Hermann Hesse in 1946. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages, and he is one of Germany's most widely read authors.   >>>   Reading this book, incidentally his final published novel before his death, was a singular experience, educational in states of mind I didn't think had their own schools. Basically, this book "Women in a River Landscape" is a near-treatise on ethical flexibility and moral ambiguity, and finally, an at times flip and at times determined resignation, that can only come with an advanced nation birthed from barbarism, having to deal with and accept the horrific sins of its not too remote past.   -   Boll, raised in a pacifist Catholic family in Cologne, occupied an interesting position in the German zeitgeist, then and now. True, he served in the army during World War II but unlike some like say Gunther Grass, he refused membership in the Hitler youth, and, after returning from war, seemed to maintain (so much as I could glean from biographical profiles here and there) a moral code and long memory that set him apart from many of his countryman. In a fascinating contrast to the likes of Mann and Hesse who also had 'qualms' with the Nazi government but left, Boll was conscripted and fought. This is reflected in "Women in a River Landscape" by, if nothing else, his relentlessly interior perspective, the idea tinging the entire setting and atmosphere of someone who was in the dirt and the shit of warfare, and knows first hand what it's like to fight a war and watch others die, and the weight that comes with survival.   -   There are moments in the text that are gorgeous. Darkly gorgeous, yes, nearly completely opaque and grimy from the moral turpitude, yes. But Boll has crafted an angry letter, a near sermon to his countryman with short memories, those who would so willingly forget or even profit from one of the darkest moments in human history for something as paltry and transient as momentary political gain. But the book's very much a product of the writer and his specific time and place.  What's said in this powerful book carries devastating relevance for any political leadership of any government with blood on its collective psyche...that is to say, all of them, now, ever and always.   (Clever Yairi Ben-Zvi on Goodreads)    Makes me, Roza, think of Russia, have never prayed to someone to die a horrible death but coming close to it wiith V.P.