Heinrich Boll: THE LOST HONOUR OF KATHARINA BLUM
In what looks like
documentary-style narrative, Heinrich Boll presents the case of a housekeeper
(Katharina Blum) who is suspected as an accomplice in a bank robbery involving
her lover that she allegedly helped to escape and evade arrest. What makes this
novel interesting is how people connected to Katharina (her friends, her
employer, her sick mother, etc.) get affected, mostly in negative way, by a
tabloid reporter who does everything to sensationalize the news on the incident. “How
violence develops and where it can lead” is the central theme of this book.
Heinrich Boll won the Nobel Prize
in Literature in 1972. This is the third book by him that I’ve read, so far.
The other two are Billiards At Half-Past Nine and The Train Was On Time. All
these books are translations into English from the original German language.
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