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Heinrich Boll
'I could only start writing when the Nazi time was over. The feeling of being liberated, and I don't mean it ironically, is still in me. I never forget that feeling of being free of that kind of terror.'
Heinrich Boll is Germany's best-selling and often controversial writer. When Boll was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972 for his novel Group Portrait with Lady, part of the prize money was used to set up a fund to help the families of persecuted writers. It was with Boll that Alexander Solzhenitsyn stayed first when he left the Soviet Union.
His latest novel The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum is about a young innocent girl whose life is ruined by the distortions of the popular press. In this rare interview from an earlier edition of The Book Programme, which was filmed in his home in Cologne, Boll talks about this novel and his other work.