SOURCE: Otten, Anna. Review of Jagd, by Martin Walser. World Literature Today 63, no. 3 (summer 1989): 480.

In the following review, Otten summarizes the themes and characters of Jagd.

Once more Martin Walser takes us into his favorite terrain, the shore of the Bodensee, and focuses on a Zuern family, as he did in Das Schwanenhaus (1980; see WLT 55:3, p. 463), where the main theme was competition. In Jagd, however, he deals primarily with eroticism, business, and politics; Gottlieb and Anna Zuern are richer, their four daughters more independent. Gottlieb, the antihero, experiences a midlife crisis over Anna's lack of interest in sexual relations, evident, for example, in a scene in which the amorous husband approaches her bed only to have her casually ask about his hemorrhoids. When Gottlieb hunts for erotic adventure in Frankfurt and Munich, however, it is no longer clear whether he is hunter or hunted, since two women, Gisi...