Biography Essay

When in the summer of 1972 Heinrich Boll received the news that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, he responded with the surprised question: "Was, ich, und nicht Gunter Grass"" (Really? I, and not Gunter Grass"). This reaction summarizes Boll's assessment of his place in West German postwar literature-sometimes referred to as "Grass-Boll-literature" —and it reflects Boll's competition with Grass, who is generally regarded by critics as the superior writer. Boll's sales figures, however, tell a different story: with 31 million books in print and having been translated into forty-five languages, he is by far the most popular of all modern German writers. In his unpretentious style he became a chronologist of the first forty years of the Federal Republic of Germany. The reader recognizes himself and people he knows in Boll's books; the simple ideas of this modest man influenced the way Germans...