25 stories that belong to the best of German post-war literature. "There it still stood, the statement we had to write back then, in this desperate life that was only three months behind..." For Heinrich Böll, it was a matter of morality to describe war and the post-war period as they truly were. However, he does not get lost in superficial realism. His gaze penetrates deep and captures, in a few seemingly trivial details, the background of those years, which are still more repressed than processed today. He wrote in the name of a deceived and tormented generation, in the name of humanity. Thus, the fate of that youth, which was thrust from the classroom into the horrors of war, found its valid expression in the unbribable, concise portrayal of the title story. With these 25 stories, Heinrich Böll became a spokesperson.