Even a cursory glance at a West-German literary magazine will reveal a bewildering number of new writers, most of them unknown to the American public. Among the few who have found an international audience is Heinrich Böll…. [He] was a member of the Group 47, together with Hans Werner Richter, Paul Schallück, Günther Eich and Alfred Andersch. In the United States, four of Böll's novels have been published so far, and there also exist several college textbooks, containing something like ten of his short stories in German.

The critics have been often bewildered by this new voice. Estimates of Böll as an artist tend to be contradictory. A few commentators classified him as a new representative of that old school of the Twenties and Thirties, "Die neue Sachlichkeit." Some attacked him for being devoid of philosophical depth, for being hypnotized by the gloom of...