Perhaps all writers of German fiction should be compelled to write Novellen. Or perhaps only after a period of apprenticeship in the Novelle should German authors be allowed a sortie into the realm of the novel. Martin Walser seems to have got the procedure the wrong way round. After almost twenty years in the wilderness of the novel Martin Walser has at long last produced a Novelle of almost classical dimensions [Ein fliehendes Pferd]….

In the novel Das Einhorn … the unicorn runs away with the author, though in accordance with tradition it does find refuge in a number of ladies; in Ein fliehendes Pferd the author (or at least one of the characters) captures the horse. Das Einhorn is a tremendous imaginative extravaganza and the reader is enormously impressed and fascinated by the author's fertile inventiveness and linguistic élan. Yet the gulf between reality and fantasy is on...