A German Master’s Modernist Epic of Postwar Amnesia and Hypocrisy

Wolfgang Koeppen’s “trilogy of failure,” written from 1951 to 1954, is a sprawling, polyphonic portrait of a physically and morally shattered country.

Wolfgang Koeppen’s “trilogy of failure,” written from 1951 to 1954, is a sprawling, polyphonic portrait of a physically and morally shattered country.