The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

The authorities tapping phones, journalists making things up, reputations destroyed — the storyline of Heinrich Boll's slim novel from 1974 will resonate with readers four decades later. As in Group Portrait with Lady, but here on a smaller scale, Boll assembles facts from documentary sources, all fictional, into a beautifully forged dagger aimed at the heart of German (or any) society. What makes the critique all the more damning is the matter-of-fact presentation of the "facts" and the author's sardonic remove.