Absent without Leave

'I urge everyone to go absent without leave. Defection and desertion I would advise in favour of ... for as I said: there are idiots who aim to hit, and everyone ought to realize the risk they are running. Firearms are instruments completely lacking in humour.' So concludes the opening tale in this collection of 21 stories, written over a fifteen-year period, offering an intimate, compassionate portrait of Germany in the shadow of the atrocities of World War Two. According to his biographer, Boll described the first story, Absent without Leave, as a fairly autobiographical novella.

The collection was originally published in German with the title Entfernung von der Truppe by Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verag in 1964.