Grass focuses on lives of ordinary people: Assessing the 20th century / MODERN HISTORY Final Edition

[Gunter Grass] may always be best known for The Tin Drum (published in 1959), the first volume of his wartime Danzig Trilogy (with Dog Years and Cat And Mouse; all just reissued in one volume in the wake of the Nobel Prize). But the curious should also check out the The Flounder (1977), perhaps the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEdmonton journal
Main Author Levesque, Roger
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Edmonton, Alta Postmedia Network Inc 13.02.2000
Subjects
20th century
Careers
Nazi groups
Nobel prizes
Writers
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Summary:[Gunter Grass] may always be best known for The Tin Drum (published in 1959), the first volume of his wartime Danzig Trilogy (with Dog Years and Cat And Mouse; all just reissued in one volume in the wake of the Nobel Prize). But the curious should also check out the The Flounder (1977), perhaps the most ribald and surreal novel of his career, and apparently Grass's favourite. Almost all of these year-by-year snapshots take place in Germany, and knowing a little of modern German history helps in sorting out who's who and what's truth or fiction because Grass is deliberately sketchy in giving away all the details. If that might at first seem to limit one's appreciation of the book consider how many other nations have gone through the sort of soul-searching upheavals, divisions and the literal reunification that Germany has in the past century? It's quite a microcosm. Each of these yearly chapters is narrated in the first-person and some clearly involve instances from Grass's own experience. It's not preachy but there is an implicit criticism of how the German reunification was handled, and warnings about neo-Nazis and ongoing racism.
ISSN:0839-296X