"I am a clown," says Hans. "I collect moments." Ostensibly intended by Boll as a simple definition of character, the statement offers considerable insight into Boll's philosophical perspective and could easily be attributed to any number of Boll's protagonists, among them Roberg Fahmel in Billiards at Half-Past Nine, Leni Pfeiffer in Group Portrait with Lady (1973), and Katharina Blum in The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975). Boll was uniquely adept at creating sympathetic, humane characters, genuinely sincere, yet often passive in their opposition to the world around them, through which Boll could criticize the German society responsible for victimizing their lives. Refusing to conform to social norms and unwilling to compromise their intrinsic sense of value, Boll's protagonists form a varied collective of displaced yet remarkably solidified individuals. Consequently, Boll's literary oeuvre, including fiction as well as non-fiction, survives as a lasting tribute to his determination as...