SOURCE: "Modern Germany's Master Storyteller," in Book World—The Washington Post, February 9, 1986, p. 4.

Prawer is a German-born English critic and educator specializing in German literature, particularly the work of Heinrich Heine. In the following review of The Stories of Heinrich Böll, he analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of the short fiction comprising the collection.

This generous selection [The Stories of Heinrich Böll] from the late Heinrich Böll's shorter and medium-sized fictions forms an ideal introduction to one of the world's master storytellers. No German author has managed so consistently to arrest attention by a striking opening sentence, and few have so successfully cultivated the kind of short story which makes a strong point in just a page or two. Arranged in roughly chronological order, these tales add up to an inner history of Germany from the 1940s to the late 1970s, seen from a...