What is the true value of a soldier''s foot that saved the life of a higher-ranking officer? How does a person who has made laughter his profession actually laugh? How do brief yes or no answers sum up a man''s happiness? What memories will a few paintings hanging in a school turned into a military hospital evoke for an injured student returning from war? Is it better to live to work, or to work to live? These and other questions will be addressed by the German writer Heinrich Boll in this book. Reflecting in his sometimes funny, sometimes angry, and sensitive style every other time, his mockery of the conditions that followed the war, which forced people to resume their lives as if nothing had happened, and his mockery of the capitalist tendency that demands everyone to work to the best of their ability for the sake of "the future"... valuing contemplation. Slowly, Heinrich Bull writes in these stories his response to a hasty world, possessed by madness, and lacking its humanity.
