Gone are the days when Martin Walser had fundamental doubts about West German society, and gingerly explored the claims of communism to offer a better life for the common man. So much is clear from his latest novel [Das Schwanenhaus], a humorous account of the professional and family tribulations of a reasonably well-to-do estate agent. In spite of the fact that his tribulations include the pregnancy of one of his unmarried daughters and an unnerving capacity for running up large debts, the sense of social stability and bourgeois good-living is such that the atmosphere of the book is a kind of late twentieth-century Biedermeier.

It is once again the story of a man barely able to cope with the demands of either his job or of his family, floundering through life, dependent on the indulgence of colleagues and the support of his wife. But in this case the...