Description
The Safety Net
Heinrich Böll
The story centres on Fritz Tolm, an aging art historian turned newspaper publisher, who is elected as the head of the “Association”, which is a secretive “power centre” in West Germany composed of bankers, industrialists and high-ranking members of the media. He replaces the steel magnate Pliefger. In particular it explores the way that he is subjected to a huge amount of security as a result of his position (he is held in a house overridden by police surveillance and lives in fear of terrorist violence from the left-wing underground) and the effect that this has on him and his family – his wife, Kathe, his daughter Sabine, and his sons Herbert and Rolf.
The novel is constructed on the basis of a polyphony of voices and perspectives; chapters are narrated from the point of view of Tolm, his daughter Sabine, Helga Hendler (the wife of Sabine’s lover), Hubert Hendler (Sabine’s lover), Rolf Tolm, Holzpuke and so on…
As with numerous other works by Böll, the novel’s setting is in Cologne and the villages and farms that surround it.
ISBN: 978-9939-76-715-4
Pages: 384
Cover: Hard
Language: Armenian
Format: 14.8×21
Published by “Antares”, 2021
Translated from German by: Karlen Matinyan