to the rabbi on his deathbed, believing that Lovinski is in fact Avrom Grünbaum. Upon Goschnik's death, the rabbi is also plagued by guilt for playing along and pretending to be Grünbaum, and feels that he is responsible for the death because he had employed Goschnik. The guilt drives him to give up his job as a rabbi andin a parallel to Schnurrewrite down his thoughts. While he had made eight previous attempts at writing novels and published contiguous short story collections like (subtitled "a novel in stories"), was Schnurre's only published novel. The book was met with negative reviews and low sales figures, in stark contrast to the positive reception of . Contemporary reviewers criticised the construction of the story as artificial, and the colloquial language used in the book as inauthentic and irritating. Later scholarship takes a more positive view of the book, and authors have proposed a number of factors that may have contributed to the book's negative reception by critics and readers, including preconceived notions on the part of the critics, deficiencies in Germany's Culture of Remembrance, and competing works that were released at the same time. Reception and awards Schnurre's early works were widely received and found their way into contemporary German school textbooks. He also held frequent and successful public readings for varied audiences. Despite this early success, he faded into relative obscurity in later life and is less present in public discourse than other important German writers. Scholars have proposed a number of factors that may have contributed to this, such as the diversity of his work which made him hard to categorise as an author, the declining popularity of short stories as an art form following the immediate post-war period, and the inherently small print runs and limited reception of poetry and children's literature. Despite his diminishing presence in public discourse, Schurre received several awards for his works, including in his late years. Among those awards were the Immermann-Preis (1959), the Georg Marckensen Literature Award (1962), the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz, 1981), the Literature Award of the City of Cologne (1982), the Georg Büchner Prize (1983) and the Culture Award of the City of Kiel (1989). Selected works Some of Schnurre's works include: Das Begräbnis, 1947 Die Rohrdommel ruft jeden Tag, 1950 Sternstaub und Sänfte. Aufzeichnungen des Pudels Ali, 1953 , 1958 Eine Rechnung, die nicht aufgeht, 1958 Das Los unserer