Although Herbert Eisenreich wrote essays, poetry, radio plays, novels, and criticism, the short story is his principal domain. He regarded the short story as the purest and most lyrical prose genre, as "ein wortgewordener Augenblick" (a moment transformed into words) that needs no explanation, names, dates, or places, that renders insignificant what happened before and what will happen after. It tells of a momentary confrontation with life, love, or death; it does not permit itself a dramatic ending but is a fragment of an unending narration. Eisenreich's artistic virtues are best displayed in his precise and exact observation--often ironic as well as laconic--of the small, even minute, which, he felt, were governed by the same laws as the big, the noisy, and the violent. In Eisenreich's chiseled language every word, every comma is chosen with care; but, like Guy de Maupassant and Gustave Flaubert, he hides this struggle...