Most Helpful Customer Reviews
|
|
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fiction or reportage? You decide., 21 Jun 2002
Katharina Blum is a quiet, reserved divorcee who lives alone. She values her privacy. One night she goes to a party and falls in love. Nothing wrong with that you might think - but Katharina is in Cologne in 1974, and is about to understand fully what that Kafka bloke was on about.
Henrich Boll's novella is an icy, brilliant satire without any humour whatsoever. Every single word - even in translation - is sharp as a scalpel; every page will chill you to the bone. Boll simply reports what actually went on in 1970s Germany: the midnight arrests, the McCarthyite persecution of "terrorists" and their "sympathisers", the callous bureaucracy that continues for its own sake and - finally - the truly satanic alliance between the police and the tabloid Press who, even more than their British cousins - care nothing about the truth.
What's even scarier than the story, however, is the fact that this isn't one. There were thousands of Katharinas in 1970s Germany; many thousands of innocent people destroyed by lies and innuendo. You will never forget this book and you'll never ever cease asking yourself the following question: How on earth could this happen in a country that is, ostensibly, a democracy?
And with the way things are going, Americans may find themselves asking that question before very long.Tony Mullen,
|
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Media hysteria and terrorism in the 1970s., 2 Jan 2008
This book is deeply rooted in the reality of 1970s West Germany.The rise of the Baader-Meinhof group and their copycats(2nd June Movement,for example)in the early 1970s led to an atmosphere of panic fed by media excesses.
Boll detested the German equivalent of the tabloid press,especially "Bild Zeitung",thinly diguised in the novel as "The News".Here he satirises and condemns the press coverage of a woman who,innocently,had contact with a terrorist suspect.The familiar rigmarole of leaks to the press by policemen with an axe to grind,distortions and flat-out lies by journalists,and the destruction of Katharina Blum's life are well depicted."Blum" means "flower" in English-the symbolism is more obvious in German than in English.
The end comes as no suprise after we see how irresponsible journalists and policemen ruin Ms.Blum's life.The book is even more relevant today than in the 1970s,after Bush The Second's declaration of the war on terror in 2001.Boll points out that institutions that are supposed to protect individuals from the state(an independent media and an apolitical police force,for example)can sometimes be the worst enemy of the citizenry.
Great book,and don't forget to check out the Volker Schlondorff film of the same name,now available on DVD.
|
|
|
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An early attack on the power of tabloid journalism., 4 Jan 2006
Katharina Blum's murder of a newspaper reporter, to which she has confessed on the opening page, is not the point of attack for a mystery story, despite that implication in many book summaries. There is too little suspense and character development to make you care much about her. Instead, Boll uses the murder and its aftermath to offer a cautionary tale about overzealous police investigators and the unfettered tabloid press--showing how the press descends on Katharina and everyone who has ever come into contact with her, twisting words, creating false impressions based upon police department leaks, casting aspersions, ruining lives, and inciting Katharina to eventual murder. Sound familiar? The novel may have been startling, and even controversial, when it was published in 1974, but no contemporary reader familiar with the tabloids at the supermarket checkout or with sensational talk shows conducting outrageously one-sided investigations will find this depiction of the press even slightly shocking. In fact, the methods of the press in this novel seem unrealistic, not because they are so extreme, but because they are so obvious, crude, and lacking in subtlety. Boll's novel is a product of its own time. While it may confirm that the conflict between responsible journalism and irresponsible sensationalism has a long history, it offers few useful insights for the present day. Mary Whipple
|
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
by Heinrich Boll
by Theodor Fontane
by Franz Kafka
by Heinrich Boll
by Bertolt Brecht
![The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum [DVD] [1975] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51g11KA05NL._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
![Sophie Scholl - The Final Days [2005] [DVD]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514V4W9C11L._SL75_SS50_.jpg)
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home