SOURCE: "Watcher on the Rhine," in The New York Times Book Review, October 16, 1966, pp. 4-5.

In the following review, Bauke lauds 18 Stories, maintaining that "it is a measure of Böll's insight and wisdom that his stories, despite their intensely local color, have universal application. "

Heinrich Böll is one of the most significant writers in contemporary Germany. Though he has never been so extravagantly praised as Günter Grass or Jakov Lind, his reputation has grown steadily over the years. In the late forties, when his countrymen turned to rebuilding their towns and their industry and started to forget the Nazi interlude, Böll established himself as the spokesman of those who remembered. His early novels, full of passionate pacifism, captured the mood of a generation that wanted peace at any price and won for their author audiences in more than a dozen languages. A decade later...