The Great Fire is an extraordinary love story set in the immediate aftermath of the great conflagration of the Second World War. In war-torn Asia and stricken Europe, men and women, still young but veterans of harsh experience, must reinvent their lives and expectations, and learn, from their past, to dream again. Some will fulfill their destinies, others will falter. At the center of the story, a brave and brilliant soldier finds that survival and...

Recounts the disorder in Europe after World War II, describing the brutal acts against Germans and collaborators, the anti-Semitic beliefs that reemerged, and the Allied-tolerated expulsions of citizens from their ancestral homelands.

Completed in 1951, but unpublished during the Nobel Prize-winner's lifetime, this novel is set in post-World War II Cologne. Here, where little beyond the cathedral is spared, a soldier attempts to rebuild his life and to find love and honest work, but he runs into a series of complications and obstacles instead. His story contrasts with that of another young man, who, though corrupt, enjoys respect and the blessing of the church.