Billiards at Half Past Nine
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Billiards at Half Past Nine
Heinrich Böll
Literature
Walter
Jun 8, 2019
There should be something by Heinrich Boll, one of Post-War Germany’s most important writers and a Nobel prize winner in literature. Boll’s literature reflects values of simple decency and humanity, in the context of a culture in which conformity to brutalities and ugliness reign dominant. His writings on the individual’s struggles to preserve his/her own decency when all around one are confirming to immorality powerfully display central moral questions that go far beyond the nazi experience, as his critiques of post-war Germany make clear. They focus on the solitude of the decent individual trying to make sense of a world in which conformity to the prevailing values, no matter how amoral or immoral, is what all expect and demand. I read a variety of his books — Billiards, The Clown, The Lost Honour of Katarina Blum — many years ago and have often thought back to the central messages that I believe they contain. The fact that no work of Boll is referenced in “1000 books” is an oversight that needs remedying.
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Stefanie Mclellan
Jan 27, 2024
Böll is one of the best German writers ever
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Philberg
6 d
A German family through destruction and reconstruction around WW2.
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