Group Portrait with Lady.

BOLL, Heinrich.

$400.00

Item Number: 122169

New York: Avon Books, 1974.

Early printing of this classic work by the Nobel Prize-winning author. Octavo, original illustrated wrappers. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the dedication page, “For Dr. P. Murray regards Heinrich Boll with thanks for your kind letter.” Translated from the German by Leila Vennewitz. In very good condition. Uncommon signed and inscribed.

Cited by the Nobel Prize committee as the “crown” of Heinrich Böll’s work, the gripping story of Group Portrait With Lady unspools like a suspenseful documentary. Via a series of tense interviews, an unnamed narrator uncovers the story—past and present—of one of Böll’s most intriguing characters, the enigmatic Leni Pfeiffer, a struggling war widow. At the center of her struggle is her effort to prevent the demolition of her Cologne apartment building, a fight in which she is joined by a motley group of neighbors. Along with her illegitimate son, Lev, she becomes the nexus of a countercultural group rebelling against Germany’s dehumanizing past under the Nazis ... and what looks to be an equally dehumanizing future under capitalism.