Martin Walser is an innovative and consistently challenging writer who has portrayed the social and cultural development of West Germany precisely and with extraordinary versatility. He is a novelist with an analytical mind who confronts the conflicts of his generation with an immediacy of purpose and a sense of artistic responsibility. Despite some unproductive experimentation and occasional lapses in his ability to find the exactly appropriate tone, he has become a brilliantly skillful master of his language and an inventive teller of stories. His brilliance, in fact, has led some critics to suspect the ultimate sincerity of his commitment to fundamental social change: they have accused him of indulging in an intellectual game of radical politics in which the uncompromising attacker of the status quo can always feel morally superior because he knows that his extreme proposals will never be implemented.

The tensions within Walser are a reflection...