The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum

An unforgettable novel that shows how easily a life can be ruined when the police and the media are allowed to run rampage through a person's life. It resonates as strongly today as it did in 1970s Germany.

Boll sustains a masterly and insidious tension to the end. He is detached, angry and totally in control

Such is the force of Boll's conviction, the clarity of his vision and the icy economy of his unemotive prose that within this short space he has distilled a spirit that burns into the palate the unmistakeable and lasting tang of truth

Heinrich Böll was one of the trio of great German writers (along with Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse) who have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Böll was born in Cologne in 1917 and brought up in a liberal Catholic pacifist family. Drafted into the Wehrmacht, he served on the Russian and French fronts and was wounded four times before he found himself in an American prisoner-of-war camp. After the war he enrolled at the University of Cologne, but dropped out to write about his shattering experience as a soldier. His first novel, The Train Was on Time, was published in 1949, and he went on to become one of the most prolific and important of post-war German writers. His best-known novels include Billiards at Half-past Nine, Children are Civilians Too, Group Portrait with Lady, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, And Never Said a Word and The Safety Net. Böll served for several years as president of International P.E.N. and was a leading defender of the intellectual freedom of writers throughout the world. He died in 1985.

FROM THE WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 
 
Katharina Blum is pretty, bright, hard-working and at the centre of a big city scandal when she falls in love with a young radical on the run from the police. Portrayed by the city's leading newspaper as a whore, a communist and an atheist, she becomes the target of anonymous phone calls and sexual threats. Blum’s life is systematically undone by the distortions of a corrupt press, concerned only with presenting the most salacious story. This is a chilling and unforgettable novel from a Nobel Prize-winning writer.

Group Portrait With Lady

Heinrich Böll was one of the trio of great German writers (along with Thomas Mann and Herman Hesse) who have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Böll was born in Cologne in 1917 and brought up in a liberal Catholic pacifist family. Drafted into the Wehrmacht, he served on the Russian and French fronts and was wounded four times before he found himself in an American prisoner-of-war camp. After the war he enrolled at the University of Cologne, but dropped out to write about his shattering experience as a soldier. His first novel, The Train Was on Time, was published in 1949, and he went on to become one of the most prolific and important of post-war German writers. His best-known novels include Billiards at Half-past Nine, Children are Civilians Too, Group Portrait with Lady, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, And Never Said a Word and The Safety Net. Böll served for several years as president of International P.E.N. and was a leading defender of the intellectual freedom of writers throughout the world. He died in 1985.

Depicting German life from WW1 until the early 1970s, Boll's novel follows Leni Pfeiffer and her illegitimate son, Lev, as they fight against the demolition of their Cologne apartment building.

Women in a River Landscape

As West German society increasingly took on a gloss of economic well-being, Boll's trenchant novesl cut through the sleek outward show to reveal festering fears and suppurating physic states excluding poison into the system. WOMEN IN A RIVER LANDSCAPE brings this process to a fierce, fince culmination. . . Boll brings a humane understanding as well as indignation to the predicament of characters who seem not only rainted culprits but also victims of history SUNDAY TIMES.

Heinrich Boll

Anna Funder

His work reaches the highest level of creative originality and stylistic perfection

Böll combines a mammoth intelligence with a literary outlook that is masterful and unique

My most-admired contemporary novelist

We must be grateful to the Penguin European Writers series, a precious venture in these dark times

From the moment I stepped on board the troop train with Private Andreas, concerns pertaining to my own world fell away completely. Holding this impelling book is tantamount to holding the young soldier's fate in one's hands. It is impossible to let go.

Böll's novel blows a stent in the human heart, and shows us the terror there. It feels more necessary than ever

This is the best book I have read this year; not by miles, but by whole astronomical units; I am stunned by it as if by a blow. It is *astonishing* to the extent that I cannot convey to you its power - how gradually one lies clutching the book wrenched into pieces by the imagery and by the extravagant profundity with which the soldier's fear and desire and unhappiness is felt...

Sarah Perry, bestselling author of The Essex Serpent and Melmoth

Twenty-four-year-old Andreas, a disillusioned German soldier, is travelling on a troop train to the Eastern Front when he has an awful premonition that he will die in exactly five days. As he hurtles towards his death, he reflects on the chaos around him - the naïve soldiers, the painfully thin girl who pours his coffee, the ruined countryside - with sudden, heart-breaking poignancy. 
 
Arriving in Poland the night before he is certain he will die, he meets Olina, a beautiful prostitute, and together they attempt to escape his fate. . .

Heinrich Boll

Praise for The Train Was on Time

His work reaches the highest level of creative originality and stylistic perfection

Böll combines a mammoth intelligence with a literary outlook that is masterful and unique

My most-admired contemporary novelist

His work reaches the highest level of creative originality and stylistic perfection

Böll combines a mammoth intelligence with a literary outlook that is masterful and unique

My most-admired contemporary novelist

His work reaches the highest level of creative originality and stylistic perfection

Böll combines a mammoth intelligence with a literary outlook that is masterful and unique

My most-admired contemporary novelist

Books by Heinrich Boll

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter