Billiards at Half Past Nine by Heinrich Boll

Billiards at Half Past Nine by Heinrich Boll

In Billiards at Half Past Nine we are shown the state of post-war Germany through the lives of the Faehmel family. B ll uses his widely-applauded narrative gift to create a cast of splendid complexity. His all-seeing eye falls upon every type of person: the mousy secretary, the psychopathic killer, the saint and the sinner, the wordly-wise and the innocent.

Heinrich B ll, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972, was one of the most prominent post-war German novelists and certainly the first to achieve international fame. He was a founder member of Gruppe 47, the radical group of writers which came together in 1947 to reform German literature. He is also associated with the literary group 'Tr mmerliteratur', literally meaning 'arising from rubble' - the rubble of Cologne and other cities destroyed by the fighting of the Second World War. Dealing with German history and guilt, as did his contemporaries G nter Grass, Peter Weiss and Martin Walser, he continued the tradition of Thomas and Heinrich Mann.

'Heinrich B ll is one of the most interesting writers to have emerged in German writing since the war ... B ll writes with great concentration and control ...' Punch