Children Are Civilians Too Author:Heinrich Boll, Leila Vennewitz (Translator) The original title of this stunning collection of twenty-six stories was "1947-1951". This period, following the defeat of the Third Reich in the Second World War was a dark and difficult time for the German people as they began to live something of human lives again. This was also the period of the emergence of the young Heinrich Boll... more » upon the literary scene, when he first set down what was to become his lifelong theme and when he discovered the style which was to become his unique voice.
These stories depict with fine and varied nuance the lives of everyday people working away at small jobs, struggling to reidentify themselves amid the ruins of their villages and towns. In these impeccable pieces, Boll achieves a powerful impact of simplicity and naturalness through quick and piercing glances at human lives in quiet action.
Heinrich Boll, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972, is postwar Germany's most distinguished writer.
Leila Vennewitz is well known as the translator of Bolls books; in 1969, she received the Society of Authors award in London for her translation of Boll's End of a Mission.