HEINRICH BLL

In 1972, Heinrich Bll became the first German to win the Nobel Prize for literature since Thomas Mann in 1929. Born in Cologne, in 1917, Bll was reared in a liberal Catholic, pacifist family. Drafted into the Wehrmacht, he served on the Russian and French fronts and was wounded four times before he found himself in an American prison camp. After the war he enrolled at the University of Cologne, but dropped out to write about his shattering experiences as a soldier. His first novel, The Train Was on Time , was published in 1949, and he went on to become one of the most prolific and important of post-war German writers. His best-known novels include Billiards at Half-Past Nine (1959), The Clown (1963), Group Portrait with Lady (1971), and The Safety Net (1979). In 1981 he published a memoir, Whats to Become of the Boy? or: Something to Do with Books . Bll served for several years as the president of International P.E.N. and was a leading defender of the intellectual freedom of writers throughout the world. He died in June 1985.

Hugo Hamilton is a novelist and the author of the bestselling German-Irish memoir, The Speckled People , about Hamiltons childhood in Dublin with a German mother and a fervent Irish nationalist father who prohibited the use of English in the house. He is also the author of Die Redselige Insel , a travel book in the steps of the Heinrich Blls Irish Journal , which was published in German by Luchterhand fifty years after the original. He lives in Dublin.

The Essential
HEINRICH BLL

The Clown

The Safety Net

Billiards at Half-Past Nine

The Train Was on Time

Irish Journal

Group Portrait with Lady

Whats to Become of the Boy? Or:
Something to Do with BooksA Memoir

The Collected Stories of Heinrich Bll

Translators Acknowledgment

I am deeply grateful to my husband, William Vennewitz,
for his assistance in this translation.
Leila Vennewitz
Vancouver, Canada

Irish Journal
Originally published in German as Irisches Tagebuch by Heinrich Bll
1957, 1988, 2005 by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG,
Cologne, Germany
Translated by Leila Vennewitz
Introduction 2011 Hugo Hamilton

Melville House Publishing
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
www.mhpbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the paperback edition as follows:

Bll, Heinrich, 1917-1985.
[Irisches Tagebuch. English]
Irish journal / Heinrich Bll; translated from the German by Leila
Vennewitz.
p. cm.
Originally published in German as Irisches Tagebuch by Heinrich Boll,
c1957, 1988, 2005 by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co. KG,
Cologne, Germany.
eISBN: 978-1-935554-83-7
IrelandDescription and travel. Bll, Heinrich, 1917-1985Travel
Ireland. I. Title.
DA978.B5613 2011
914.1504823dc22
2011000600

v3.1

CONTENTS

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INTRODUCTION
by Hugo Hamilton

IRISH JOURNAL