The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum Author:Heinrich Boll Katharina Blum is a pretty, bright, hard-working girl and at the centre of a big city scandal when, at a carnival party, she falls in love with a young radical on the run from the police. Portrayed by the city's leading newspaper as a whore, a communist and an atheist, she becomes the target of anonymous phone calls and sexual threats. Her life ... more »ruined by the distortions of a corrupt press, she shoots the offending journalist and gives herself up for arrest. Step by step, and with affecting forensics clarity, Katharina's story is reconstructed for the reader, gradually disclosing an entire panorama of human relationship and motive. The novel is a masterful comment on the law and the press, the labyrinth of social truth and the relentless collusion of fact and fiction.« less