SOURCE: Ziolkowski, Theodore. Review of Aus dem Wortschatz unserer Kämpfe: Prosa, Aufsätze, Gedichte, by Martin Walser. World Literature Today 77, no. 1 (April-June 2003): 134.

In the following review, Ziolkowski compliments the variety of the prose pieces collected in Aus dem Wortschatz unserer Kämpfe: Prosa, Aufsätze, Gedichte.

In a career spanning almost fifty years, Martin Walser has never been less than provocative and controversial, whether he was questioning the social values of the early Wirtschaftswunder or challenging the recent “ritualization” of Auschwitz and its use as a “moral cudgel.” In honor of his seventy-fifth birthday his publisher has issued a representative collection of his writings [Aus dem Wortschatz unserer Kämpfe: Prosa, Aufsätze, Gedichte] covering the entire oeuvre (apart from the major novels) of this literary gadfly.

The volume consists of five clusters of prose separated by small groups of verse. Following three autobiographical poems, the book...