“Böll’s writing is filled with a bleak beauty that unflinchingly gazes upon the sources of both the bleakness and the beauty of life …” —The Rumpus
“What’s to Become of the Boy? makes an ideal short introduction to Böll. At the same time, it offers an unusual perspective on Hitler’s rise to power: The rise of totalitarianism and the stultification of civil society, as seen through the eyes of a teenage boy.” —Anne Applebaum (from the new introduction)
“[P]ared down prose, lean but sturdy, subtle yet unsettling, always with the power to provoke and to devastate.”
—The Quarterly Conversation
