Penguin Classics The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, (Paperback)

from sushicat

The narrator contrasts the sensationalist news stories with the real facts and shows us how a life can be destroyed by a chance encounter and the distorted reporting of a few facts, put into completely wrong context, enhanced by speculation and misquoted witnesses. And the genie, once out of the ...

from getrus

The book begins at the end where we find out Katharina killed a man in her apartment. In fact, she goes to the police and reports the crime herself. The book is about the journey it took for her to go from a hard-working, respected young woman to a murderer all in less than a week. She was brough...

from Kristelh

"or how violence can develop and where it can lead" Sensational tabloid news and the political climate over the panic of the Red Army Faction in the 70s in Germany. The protagonist, Katherine Blum, is an housekeeper whose life is ruined by a reporter who publishes outright lies. She invites him t...

from EadieB

I enjoyed this novel very much as the author, Heinrich Boll, did a great job of showing how newspapers can ruin a person's life by publishing lies in order to use the power of their ink. It is an unique mystery story as we are shown the end result of murder and how the violence unfolds throughout...

from Britt84

I remember reading some of Böll's work when I was in high school and didn't really like it back then. Perhaps it's because I'm older now, but I was pleasantly surprised by this work. I really enjoyed Böll's dry tpe of humour, his critique of newspapers and the gossip press, and the way he writes ...