SOURCE: Skwara, Erich Wolfgang. Review of Ohne einander, by Martin Walser. World Literature Today 68, no. 2 (spring 1994): 364.

In the following review, Skwara accounts for the popular appeal of Ohne einander, highlighting the novel's themes.

In 1991 Martin Walser published his magnum opus, Die Verteidigung der Kindheit (see WLT 66:2, p. 334), a novel likely to be considered the most relevant book written about the tragic absurdity of the two former Germanies. Now Walser has returned to his lifelong topics of human frailty, the artificiality of marriage, and the absurdity of love and love's absence. Ohne einander (Without Each Other), the new novel's splendidly evocative title, sums it up: the closer we live together, as in marriage, as in the parent-child relationship, the greater may be our distance, the deeper it hurts to come upon our illusions. We can learn a lot about ourselves in this cruel book; however, we do not find...