Heinrich Boll

Il romanzo si avvia in un'atmosfera kafkiana: l'ingegner Robert Fahmel, esperto di calcoli strutturali, si lamenta con la segreteria per aver disubbidito a un suo preciso ordine: non dire mai dove si trova, se non alla madre e al padre, ai figli, e a un certo Schrella, che scopriremo poi essere suo cognato e amico di liceo, quando entrambi non aderirono alla gioventù nazista. Siamo nel 1958, nella

We find ourselves in Germany in the years immediately following the Second World War. The wounds of war are still palpable, physical and psychological: destruction, destitution, memories of the conflict’s horrors, and no hope for the future. Fred, a telephone operator at the city’s archbishopric, has abandoned the family home where his wife, Kate, and their children live, after catching himself

Hans is a young man from a wealthy and influential family who works as a clown and has been left by his girlfriend, Maria. A devout Catholic, the young woman could no longer live with Hans, who is fiercely critical of religion and, more broadly, of bourgeois respectability, and who cannot stand the Catholic circle Maria frequents. Hans turns to drink and finds himself jobless, alone in his flat,