SOURCE: "The Short Stories of Siegfried Lenz," in German Life and Letters, Vol. 19, 1966, pp. 241-51.

In this essay, Russ surveys many themes and stylistic devices used by Lenz in the stories collected in Jäger des Spotts, Das Feuerschiff, and Der Spielverderber.

Siegfried Lenz belongs to that talented echelon of writers born in the later 1920s, and currently reaching the height of their powers. In our own country, translations of his work have been both published and broadcast. Yet he has not so far attracted the attention of 'Germanisten' here to the extent that one might have expected. It is in the hope of rectifying this situation, in some measure, that I would like to offer an interim survey of one department of his work.

Most of us gained our first knowledge of Lenz from So zärtlich war Suleyken, published in 1955. Now such an introduction is misleading...