BERLIN LETTER
521
of tradition. Two young war widows have to bring up their sons in a
small town of postwar Germany. There are the "uncles," and a com–
munity of friends, relations, old foes, new converts to democratic life,
who have also survived and try with more or less honesty to make a
new life between the old and the new. The boys, eleven years of age,
are just a bit older than this new German state and existence, and the
book is mainly written from their point of view. There is the whole
furor and the brief but acute tragedies of that age when they experience
the usual sexual and moral quandaries among the entanglements of
their elders.
This novel, which appeared this year, is perhaps an indication that
a clearer perspective of the past and the present is now at hand; that
a new tradition, in the sense of a cultural base for the free rein of
talent, is about to be established.
Ursula Brumm
