Franz Werfel (1890–1945)

A high-ranking civil servant, celebrating his 50th birthday in 1936, receives among congratulatory cards, a letter from a woman he had seduced years before while tutoring her brother in her father's house, asking for his help for a young man. This letter leads to all kinds of complications. The author has given a good idea of what can ensue from misunderstanding, and also, a devastating portrait of a creep, the main character. A good psychological study, a forerunner to the whole genre of "Holocaust literature."… (more)

There doesn't seem to be a specific name for that category of stories in which adult characters are confronted with the consequences of hateful things they did in adolescence, but there's a lot of that sort of thing about. Maybe writers are disproportionally drawn from the ranks of former school bullies with guilty consciences; more likely they are all former victims of bullying indulging in a bit of wishful thinking...

This is certainly one of those, as Werfel's subtitle confirms: on the afternoon before the 25-year reunion of the class of 1902, examining magistrate Dr Ernst Sebastian is made to realise that it could well have been his own selfish and irresponsible actions as a schoolboy that started his friend Adler on the path that led to him being arrested on suspicion of murdering a prostitute.

Needless to say, it isn't quite as simple as that, Werfel introduces a few ironic twists into the story, but what this is really about is the unravelling of the flimsy structure on which the self-satisfied, pompous Sebastian has built his life. Sebastian has got away with all his failings because he is from a rich, powerful, establishment family; Adler has been unable to realise his early promise because his borderline status as a poor, Jewish boy in a middle-class Catholic school makes him the automatic scapegoat for everything.… (more)