[The Black Obelisk] is set in a small city in Germany in 1923, when the effects of the First World War are still cruelly felt and the signs of the war to come are growing clear. Ludwig Bodmer, twenty-five years old and a war veteran, has taken up life again in his native city and is scraping a living as the advertising manager of a tombstone firm…. Bodmer, who tells his own story in the present tense, is a man of singularly attractive personality. His view of life is tough, romantic, sympathetic, and amused. He feels anger at the injustice and despair he observes all around him, but he refuses to allow his anger to spread into a habit of daily bitterness. It is doubtful whether he can ever be sour. He has the air of a man who can see his most treasured dreams break and not try...