Das Brot der frühen Jahre und andere Prosastücke

This masterful early work describes one day in the life of Walter Fendrich, a young washing-machine repairman. Wry, ironic, yet intensely felt, it is an enchanting love story set amid the spiritual wreckage and growing materialism of postwar Germany.<br/><br/>Torn by insecurity and cynicism, Fendrich is obsessed with hunger, "with the wolf living inside my stomach." The war and wartime shortages haunt him as an insatiable craving for bread, a bottomless desperation for security and gratification of basic needs. One day he finds himself and his world transformed when he meets the daughter of a high school principal. Love, he discovers suddenly, dispels his cravings as bread never could.