GROUP PORTRAIT WITH LADY

The novel is concerned with a woman named Leni Pfieffer (née Gruyten) who faces eviction from her apartment building in Cologne. It structured as a report compiled from interviews conducted by an unnamed author with Lenis friends, family, employers, coworkers, and others, forming a detailed social portrait of life in Cologne from the 1910s to 1971. Like many of Böll's novels, there is a particular focus on representing the Nazi era from the perspective of ordinary people.