Hermann Lenz is virtually unknown outside Germany-none of his books has been translated-and even in the German-speaking world he has never had a large readership. But he has always enjoyed the support of a small but steadily increasing group of admirers who sustained him during the many years before his work found general critical recognition. His position in postwar German fiction is now secure and is based on the totality of his creative output rather than on a single great success.

His life is entirely given to his writing; he scrupulously guards his privacy and abstains from involvement in nonliterary issues. Therefore, Lenz is known mainly through his novels, many of which are strongly autobiographical. But his books reveal only remembrances, thoughts, and emotions that have been transformed into fiction. This artistic metamorphosis of the raw material of daily existence into the lucid cohesion of finely stylized narration...