SOURCE: "Böll—'A Miniature Dante'," in The Christian Science Monitor, Vol. 62, No. 125, April 23, 1970, p. 12.

Heiney is an American educator, novelist, and critic. In the following review, he provides a positive assessment of Children Are Civilians Too.

It may very well be that "national voices" in literature, as they used to be known, are disappearing. In the time of Dostoevski and Tolstoi people talked about the "Russian Soul." The German tone of Hesse and Mann, the Scandinavian mood of Hamsun and Selma LagerlÖf, the Frenchness of Paul Bourget, are unmistakably linked with their national origins. There was an "American voice" in fiction that began with Twain and Melville, and was still recognizable in the writers of the '20s and '30s.

But this is no longer so, or not to the degree that it used to be. It is a common-place to say that technology is...