The Safety Net

Nobel Prize for Literature 1972

Fritz Tolm has risen to the most powerful position in Germany. With fame comes fear and vulnerability.

Threats to his life are met with the all-pervasive “safety-net” of police protection and surveillance.

Trapped in a house they dare not leave, where every visitor is suspect and every object a potential bomb, Tolm and his family wait to discover when and how terrorism will overtake them.

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Armenia: Antares / France: Seuil / Korea: ZMANZ / Russia: AST / UK: Secker & Warburg

The title was furthermore published in the following countries: Brazil, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, USA, Yugoslavia.

  • Publisher: Kiepenheuer&Witsch
  • Release: 01.01.1979
  • ISBN: 978-3-462-01346-7
  • 416 Pages
  • Author: Heinrich Böll
The Safety Net
Heinrich Böll The Safety Net
Samay Böll
© Samay Böll
Heinrich Böll

In 1972, Heinrich Böll became the first German to win the Nobel Prize for literature since Thomas Mann in 1929. Born in Cologne, in 1917, Böll 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 began writing 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. Böll 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.