Volume 41, Number 19 · November 17, 1994
The Blood of the Poor
By Gabriele Annan
The Silent Angel
by Heinrich Böll, translated by Breon Mitchell
St. Martin's, 182 pp., $19.95
Heinrich Böll's very first novel, Der Engel Schwieg, has just appeared in a decent but uninspired translation by Breon Mitchell. It is called The Silent Angel, published by St. Martin's Press, and described by their publicity department as 'the rarest of literary finds—a previously unpublished novel by a Nobel Prize-winner.' Böll would have seen the irony of this daft recommendation on prestige grounds. Status, wealth, and prestige are the enemy in all he wrote, fiction and nonfiction alike. And he might have been amused by the pun in the press's cable address: Saintmart. The irreconcilable conflict between saintliness or even just plain humanity on the one hand, and the market (mart) on the other was the message he proclaimed. Besides, St. Martin is a particularly suitable patron saint for this story, in which a rich young man chooses to give his life for another's, and leaves all his possessions to the poor.
Review, 2222 words
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