SOURCE: “Legal Fiction.” Times Literary Supplement (12 September 1968): 977.

In the following review, the critic provides a negative assessment of The Battle.

This is a reedited version of a book that created a great stir in 1964 when it was published by Walter in Olten. Since the new version has been prepared for paperback publication by the author himself, it is worth reviewing it in perspective.

Alexander Kluge, whose great-uncle Kurt (1886-1940) wrote some charming pieces of entertainment fiction (Der Herr Kortüm, Die Zaubergeige), turned away from entertainment with a vengeance when he decided to study law. Born in 1932, he published his first book at the age of 26, Die Universitäts-Selbstverwaltung, a legal study of university administration, that thorny subject which later started off the students' revolts. In 1961 there followed one of the most intelligent works of our day about the interrelationship of culture and economics, Kulturpolitik und Ausgabenkontrolle, written...