In Böll's last novel, politicians, bankers, and public relations men of the new postwar Germany cruise through the social murk seeking alliances, victims, and territory. But behind the men's self-important posturings, their wives and mistresses talk from the privacy of their riverside villas with irrepressible candor. Their conversations and musings reveal the bitterness and failure of an entire generation that has sold out, chosen to forget, and by doing so deprived itself of a future.

Women in a River Landscape is Böll's final indictment of the greedy quest for power and its ruinous effect. Completed shortly before his death and published posthumously.