The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

A brilliant narrative voice; a great reflection on the tricks and power--for good and bad--of narrative, particularly as used by journalists and crime writers; and a hilarious satire on conservatives, radicals, liberals and, particularly, middle aged men's penises. It reads well, which is a credit to the translator. Basically, this is the best novel I've read in a while, and I can't wait to pick up more Boll.

Although it says “story” on the title page, Böll himself referred to it as a ”pamphlet”, and that’s basically what it is. There’s a rudimentary plot about a young woman who finds herself mixed up in a police investigation when her new boyfriend turns out to be on the run and suspected of being a red terrorist (in fact he’s nothing more than an army deserter who took some of the regimental funds with him when he left, but it’s 1974 and everyone is nervous), but the whole point of the book is to express Böll’s anger at the opportunistic and irresponsible reporting of tabloid newspapers that value sensation over truth, specifically Axel Springer’s flagship, the Bild-Zeitung (it’s simply called the ZEITUNG in the show more text, but there’s never any doubt about which paper he means, or who owns it). Böll had his fun when the book came out and for a little while the Springer papers mysteriously stopped printing the German bestseller list every week. And again a year later when Volker Schlöndorff turned the book into a successful film…

Katharina is a model German of the Wirtschaftswunder period, a young woman who has risen above a terrible childhood and a failed early marriage to gain qualifications, build a career for herself, and buy a modern apartment and a Volkswagen. When she meets Ludwig at a carnival party, they both realise that they have found the person they want to be with, but after he slips away from her apartment in the early hours, Katharina is interviewed by the police, and before she knows what’s happening her picture is on the front page of the ZEITUNG, and her past life is being taken apart on pages 7-9, complete with information leaked by the police and selective misquotations from people she once knew. Böll gives the book a deliberately “objective” feel, as though it’s compiled from documents and statements of those involved — he uses the metaphor of a child building a system of waterways by connecting puddles on a beach. The text is supposed to jar as much as possible with the biased and sensational accounts of the ZEITUNG. Definitely still relevant, even though Böll and his near-contemporary Springer are both long gone (Bild is sadly still very much with us…). show less

This cool, calm, and collected short novel reads as a mixture of factual report and parable. It concerns the toxic combination of police overreaction, misogyny, and sensationalist newspaper reporting that destroy the life of one Katharina Blum. The narrative unfolds smoothly and inexorably in a series of short chapters. I was immediately immersed. Katharina herself was a sympathetic and fascinating character, whose reactions seemed to me wholly convincing. I couldn’t help feeling that brilliant writing made this novel more compelling than a murder mystery; there is never any mystery about whodunnit, just the the precise reasons why and the assignment of blame.

My mother recommended this book to me and I’m very glad she did. It will show more definitely linger in my mind. I also greatly appreciated the insult on page 132, “You can put your sympathy right back in the fridge where you keep all the rest of your feelings.” show less

Boll's short scathing attack on how the media creates the news instead of, as it claims, just reporting it (I've refused to read "news" magazines for years because of just this fact). Since its 1974 the newspapers are the primary focus but you can transfer this to almost any "news" organization (the Arab Spring is a case in current events).

Poor Katharina Blum inadvertently commits a minor crime and eventually is implicated by the "News" to be a communist, brothel owner, prostitute, organized crime member (moll), embezzler, abbeter, Nazi, etc. The media drives her mother to an early grave, she can't get a job, receives threats, and is constantly being harrassed by the police, who already know she is innocent of the inital crime. In the show more ultimate creation of the news, Katharina is driven to end of her wits: she finally murders the badgering reporter who also made indecent advances to her. In the final insult the media insists on the premeditation of the crime when it is in fact a crime of passion.

The crimes are revealed from the start and the story evolves around how this relaively minor event ends up with such a tragic conclusion.

The story is told in a faux just-the-facts reportage to emphasize the subject matter. show less

This book pissed me off!! Not Mr Heinrich Böll... not his language... not the story. The damn press that is the central 'bad guy' in this book! Böll did an excellent job presenting his case. I could feel his anger, his disdain. It was tangible. And did I mention... it pissed me off? I think I would have done the exact same thing if I were wearing her heels.

One thing i found evident, Böll did hold contempt for the press, for politics, for religion (but thought highly of art). It came out in this forensic-like detailed tale of an innocent victim of these powers. And like the plague, her relations and friends, those around her, were infected with it also and suffered.

Sad thing is this stuff really does go on and on and on... I'm not show more talking about the feeding frenzy around the Spears and Lohans who seem to invite such press, but the truly innocent ones who become unknowingly players in a game that is too big for them.

Good read, but it should make you angry. show less

At the beginning of the novel, Katharina Blum arrives at a police inspector’s house and lets him know that she has killed a journalist whose body is in her apartment. In the rest of the novel, a very methodical and detached narrator takes us through the events of the last week that led up to this moment. Earlier in the week, Katharina spent the night with a man she just met at a party who was wanted by the police. The police question her very thoroughly and suspect that she is his accomplice. A less-than-reputable newspaper gets a hold of the story and exaggerates things to make Katharina and the people who are close to her look as bad as possible, and Katharina is not the only person whose life is ruined by the newspaper’s show more slander.

I really liked this book. The unique narrative style sucks you in and makes it hard to put down. I loved the narrator’s tone of voice and logical progression through the facts which made him seem like an independent and impartial observer. I was also struck by how relevant the topic is today. I was just reading an article about how in the age of the internet, it’s very easy for people to be publicly shamed and have their lives ruined for an offense that doesn’t deserve such a severe punishment (a badly worded or poorly thought out post, for example). I almost gave the book five stars, but it just fell a little short for me (there were a couple times when it was hard to keep the characters straight, but I may just have been reading with too many distractions). show less

Zavarba ejtő írás - ha a keletkezésének idejét nézzük, méginkább. Azóta történtek már pro és contra nagy visszhangot kiváltó halálesetek a médiával kapcsolatban. Furcsa írásmű, mely valahol a hírlapi cikk és a bűnügyi tudósítás/kihallgatási jegyzőkönyv között lebeg. Nagyon erős hangsúlyt ad a véleménye kifejezésének, amely azonban indirekt marad mindvégig. A kiszolgáltatottság és a tehetetlenség regénye marad mindvégig, ahelyett, hogy egy szerelmi történet lenne...