« The story deals with the sensationalism of tabloid news and the political climate of panic over Red Army Faction terrorism in the 1970s Federal Republic of Germany. The main character, Katharina Blum, is an innocent housekeeper whose life is ruined by an invasive tabloid reporter and a police investigation when the man with whom she has just fallen in love turns out to be wanted by the police because of a bank robbery. Later it turns out that he is not a bank robber: he is a deserter from the Army who had stolen money from his camp before deserting. Ultimately she shoots the reporter, after she invited him to her house for an interview. The book’s fictional tabloid paper, Die Zeitung (The Newspaper), is modeled on the actual German Bild-Zeitung.
