In his weighty book [Heimatmuseum, Lenz] tells the story of a Masurian Heimatmuseum, from its creation by an uncle of the narrator Zygmunt Rogalla, through its sixty-year history up until its deliberate incineration by the narrator himself. Like the situation in Böll's Billard um halbzehn in which Robert Faemel blows up the monastery built by his grandfather, Rogalla's Akt der Befreiung is similarly motivated, even though the reasons for the museum's destruction are several and fundamentally more complex than in Böll's book. They generate the overall suspense of the novel and are only revealed at the book's end.

Heimatmuseum should appeal most favorably to those intimately familiar with the German-Polish area it so vividly describes—i.e. Masuren, a region of thick forests, glistening lakes, strange wildlife and mystical folk customs. In fact the initial half of the novel is a collection of tales, all of...