Wolfgang Hildesheimer's first radio play was performed in 1952, the same year his first collection of stories was published. His literary career combined drama with narrative fiction, and the first of several literary prizes he won was for a radio play, Prinzessin Turandot (Princess Turandot, 1954), which was later adapted for the stage. In his essay "Die Wirklichkeit des Absurden" (The Reality of the Absurd, 1969), originally a talk given at the University of Frankfurt in 1967, Hildesheimer says that the absurd is an indication of the silent world that refuses to give humanity an answer to its question. By "the world" is meant religious, political, and social institutions; the unanswered question refers to the atrocities that were allowed to happen to the Jewish population of Europe during World War II. Following the Holocaust, people can no longer have faith in governments, institutions, or rules of any kind. All Hildesheimer's work for...