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When in the summer of 1972 Heinrich Böll received the news that he had been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, he responded with the surprised question: "Was, ich, und nicht Günter Grass"" (Really? I, and not Günter Grass"). This reaction summarizes Böll's assessment of his place in West German postwar literature--sometimes referred to as "Grass-Böll-literature"--and it reflects Böll's competition with Grass, who is generally regarded by critics as the superior writer. Böll's sales figures, however, tell a different story: with 31 million books in print and having been translated into forty-five languages, he is by far the most popular of all modern German writers. In his unpretentious style he became a chronologist of the first forty years of the Federal Republic of Germany. The reader recognizes himself and people he knows in Böll's books; the simple ideas of this modest man influenced the way Germans look at their second republic.
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