A Runaway Horse, by the esteemed novelist Martin Walser, revolves around two friends, long separated, who along with their wives meet on vacation. One is an idle teacher; the other, an optimistic go-getter. The teacher discovers he can't avoid dealing head-on with life any more than one can reason with a runaway horse. Peter Schneider's The Wall Jumper captures the dilemmas of the Cold War at its height: an era that mixed paranoia with hope among those who risked all by jumping the Berlin Wall. The Sunday I Became World Champion, by F. C. Delius, portrays a postwar German village through the eyes of the local preacher's son -- a boy whose stutter is helped, in conjunction with the rising morale of the other townspeople, by the success of the German national soccer team as it vies for the World Cup.