Women in a River Landscape

In BÖll's last novel, politicians, bankers, and public relations men of the new postwar Germany cruise through the social murk seeking alliances, victims, and territory. But behind the men's self-important posturings, their wives and mistresses talk from the privacy of their riverside villas with irrepressible candor. Their conversations and musings reveal the bitterness and failure of an entire generation that has sold out, chosen to forget, and by doing so deprived itself of a future.

Women in a River Landscape is BÖll's final indictment of the greedy quest for power and its ruinous effect. Completed shortly before his death and published posthumously, this is its first publication in paperback.

"The writing bears the stamp of one of the most genuinely high-minded men of letters this century has produced, and the words spoken on those terraces above the Rhine remain memorable long after the book has been laid down." --New York Times Book Review