The modern German novel

The principal aim of the pages that follow is to give an account of prose fiction written in Germany between 1945 and 1957. The decade which has just passed has been a lively period in the production of novels and shorter stories in Central Europe; moreover, it draws together various phases of the German novel from earlier periods and allows us to examine works which, while being freely open to external influences, whether from England, America, Russia, France, or elsewhere, at the same time have their own peculiar stamp. From this contemporary writing we may legitimately deduce the existence of features which are peculiar to German fiction, and ask where the special contribution of German novelists lies, and what their particular problems are. - p. 1.