Next to Günter Grass and Martin Walser, Siegfried Lenz is the most highly acclaimed and popular living German novelist and author of short stories; along with Grass, Walser, and Heinrich Böll, he has helped to shape the path of German literature since 1951. His breakthrough as a writer came in 1968 with the publication of Deutschstunde (translated as The German Lesson, 1971). By 1975 this novel had sold over a million copies and had been translated into nineteen foreign languages. Since 1968 most of Lenz's books have been on the German bestseller lists. His oeuvre mostly consists of novels and short stories but also includes dramas, radio plays, travel books, and essays.

Lenz was born on 17 March 1926 in Lyck, a small town in Masuria, East Prussia (now Elk, Poland); his father was a civil servant. Like his classmates, he became a member of the Hitler Youth organization. Upon being...