SOURCE: Butler, Michael. “Taking on the System.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4893 (10 January 1997): 22.

In the following review, Butler examines the significance of the critical realism of Finks Krieg, summarizing the novel's themes, its critical reception, and its relationship to Walser's other works.

The furore surrounding Martin Walser's latest novel, Finks Krieg, together with major work recently published by Günter Grass and Christa Wolf, has sent a signal to fractious literary pundits in Germany that the older generation of-writers has no intention of slipping quietly into a well-earned retirement. Though their reputations were established in the late 1950s and 60s, their work continues to provoke and attract readers frequently, bewildered by the attitudinizing and modish pretensions which all too often characterize literary debates in post-unification Germany.

The key to the lasting significance of such writers is their adherence to a form of critical realism which combines sharp social observation...