The Train Was on Time

Heinrich Boll

It's hard to get more basic than this. Boll's first novel (a novella, really) is about a soldier who, on the train home, realizes he's going to die soon. After a few nervous hours, he's figured out the time and place, and he spends the rest of the novel alternately waiting for the end and marveling that he can still enjoy life as he gets closer and closer to the time he thinks he's going to die.

Again, this is a novel that's very thin on plot, proving once again that characterization is more than enough to move a story forward if it's done correctly. The soldier and the two men he meets and befriends on the train exist in a kind of eerie otherness throughout the novel, despite being forced to interact with those around them now and again. And by the end of the novel, when our main character has us completely convinced he's correct in his assumption, we definitely care whether he's going to die or not. An excellent debut from an author who went on to prove time and again it wasn't a fluke.