“Every morning I experience a split personality when my driver asks me which way we’ll go: left via Humboldtsstraße, or right via Wilhelmstraße.” The novel “Women by the Rhine” was published four weeks after the author’s death. In this novel, as in Henry Böll’s most recent major prose works, his gift for seeing in private fate a reflection of the destinies of an era, his “reportage” style, and his impeccable accuracy in character sketches appear with vivid, almost classical completeness.