Missing Persons and Other Essays

Book excerpt: The only collection of Boll's nonfiction prose to be published in English spans over two decades of social, political, literary, and cultural commentary. These twenty-nine essays, reviews, and speeches reflect the same moral passion and deep wisdom that resonate through his fiction. Here is Boll the Nobel laureate and Boll the private man: his compassion for ordinary people, his unblinking view of the tragedies of war, his satiric portrait of modern urban life, and his deeply personal reflections on life and literature.