Helmut Heißenbüttel is one of the leading experimental or avant-garde writers in West Germany. For over a quarter of a century he has created works which attempt to reorient the reader's world view through innovative linguistic manipulations. He has also produced many theoretical statements to explain the reasons behind his literary experiments and the results he hopes to achieve. As a critic he has written a host of essays, reviews, statements, speeches, forewords, and afterwords on the gamut of twentieth-century literature and art. As a radio producer in Stuttgart he has introduced the listening public to a wide variety of critical issues in literature, theory, and criticism. He has been a dominant force in shaping postwar German literature, particularly the nontraditional variety.

Heißenbüttel was born in 1921 to Hans and Klara Lorenz Heißenbüttel in the small town...