Albrecht Goes (rhymes roughly with verse) is best known as the author of a few short stories describing vital moments of human contact and religious experience. Unruhige Nacht (1950; translated as Unquiet Night, 1951) was translated into fifteen languages and has sold 165,000 copies in the German edition. Das Brandopfer (1954; translated as The Burnt Offering, 1956) was translated into eleven languages, Das Löffelchen (1965; translated as "The Boychik," 1969) into five. A fourth story, Das mit Katz (The Business with Katz, 1984), however, has only been privately printed and published in one newspaper. In these poetic yet concrete narrations, with their skilled use of rhetorical and structural devices and different registers of language, Goes grasps a problem of fundamental evil: the persecution and murder of the innocent under Hitler. He sees Christian renewal, not existentialist despair, as the answer to the political situation. Though largely disregarded by the academic world, the stories deserve...