The Clown (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Boll, Heinrich; Vennewitz, Leila

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014018726X ISBN 13: 9780140187267

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1994

Synopsis

Acclaimed entertainer Hans Schneir collapses when his beloved Marie leaves him because he won’t marry her within the Catholic Church. The desertion triggers a searing re-examination of his life—the loss of his sister during the war, the demands of his millionaire father and the hypocrisies of his mother, who first fought to “save” Germany from the Jews, then worked for “reconciliation”
afterwards.

Heinrich Böll’s gripping consideration of how to overcome guilt and live up to idealism—how to find something to believe in—gives stirring evidence of why he was such an unwelcome presence in post-War German consciousness . . . and why he was such a necessary one.

About this title

About the Author:

Heinrich Boll won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972. Born in Cologne in 1917, Boll was raised in a pacifist Catholic family who later opposed Nazism. After an apprenticeship at a bookseller's, he was drafted into the Nazi Wehrmacht before being sent to an American prisoner of war camp in 1945. After the war he enrolled at university, but dropped out to write about his shattering experiences as a soldier: The Train Was On Time was his first novel, published in 1949, and he went on to become one of the most prolific and important post-war German authors. Boll served for several years as the president of International P.E.N. and was a leading defender of the intellectual freedom of writers throughout the world. He died in 1985.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 014018726X
• ISBN 13: 9780140187267
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256