Grass, Günter 1927-

The tin drum by Günter Grass ( Book )
481 editions published between 1959 and 2010 in 28 languages and held by 4,172 libraries worldwide
Acclaimed as the greatest German novel written since the end of World War II , The Tin Drum is the autobiography of thirty-year-old Oskar Matzerath who has lived through the long Nazi nightmare and who, as the novel begins, is being held in a mental institution. Willfully stunting his growth at three feet for many years, wielding his tin drum and piercing scream as anarchistic weapons, he provides a profound yet hilarious perspective on both German history and the human condition in the modern world.

Dog years by Günter Grass ( Book )
159 editions published between 1953 and 2008 in 12 languages and held by 2,592 libraries worldwide
A novel in three parts, beginning in the 1920s and ending in the 1950s, that follows the lives of two friends from the prewar years in Germany through an apocalyptic period and its startling aftermath.

Cat and mouse by Günter Grass ( Book )
254 editions published between 1961 and 2009 in 20 languages and held by 2,500 libraries worldwide
Dantzig, durant la guerre. Mahlke, enfant à demi-orphelin, membre des Jeunesses hitlériennes, rêve de devenir clown. Ses camarades, dont le narrateur, qui le suit comme une ombre, distinguent autour de lui une nimbe légendaire.

The flounder by Günter Grass ( Book )
124 editions published between 1976 and 2011 in 16 languages and held by 2,366 libraries worldwide
Based loosely on Grimm's The Fisherman and his Wife, this triumphant blend of folk tale and contemporary story takes place over the course of nine months, during which the wife of the narrator becomes pregnant and is regaled with tales of the various cooks the fisherman has met throughout his life. The emerging themes of the novel expose the periods when men made history and women's contributions went largely, in some cases gravely, unrecognized. Inventive, imaginitive and irreverent, this humorous, fundamentally brilliant novel highlights the value of modern-day myth and timeless legend.

Local anaesthetic by Günter Grass ( Book )
97 editions published between 1961 and 2007 in 14 languages and held by 2,268 libraries worldwide
Starusch, a 40 year old teacher of German and history, undergoes protracted dental treatment in an office where TV is used to distract the patients. Under local anesthesia, the patient projects onto the screen his past and present with the fluidity and visual quality of the movies. A satirical portrait of social confusions.

My century by Günter Grass ( Book )
94 editions published between 1999 and 2009 in 21 languages and held by 2,194 libraries worldwide
One hundred stories, each named after a year this century. In one, Erich Maria Remarque gives his views on World War I, in another former Nazis reflect on the good old days, while a third is on the fall of the Berlin Wall from a dead woman's point of view.

Crabwalk by Günter Grass ( Book )
77 editions published between 2002 and 2009 in 19 languages and held by 2,156 libraries worldwide
The author of the Tin Drum takes on the worst maritime disaster in history, the sinking of a German cruise ship packed with refugees by a Soviet sub, a disaster that killed nine thousand people. Gunter Grass has been wrestling with Germany's past for decades now, but no book since The Tin Drum has generated as much excitement as this engrossing account of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. A German cruise ship turned refugee carrier, it was attacked by a Soviet submarine in January 1945. Some 9,000 people went down in the Baltic Sea, making it the deadliest maritime disaster of all time. Born to an unwed mother on a lifeboat the night of the attack, Paul Pokriefke is a middle-aged journalist trying to piece together the tragic events. While his mother sees her whole existence in terms of that calamitous moment, Paul wishes their life could have been less touched by the past. For his teenage son, who dabbles in the dark, far-right corners of the Internet, the Gustloff embodies the denial of Germany's wartime suffering. "Scuttling backward to move forward," Crabwalk is at once a captivating tale of a tragedy at sea and a fearless examination of the ways different generations of Germans now view their past. Winner of the Nobel Prize.

Too far afield by Günter Grass ( Book )
50 editions published between 1990 and 2008 in 9 languages and held by 1,915 libraries worldwide
The winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature tells the story of two old men in Berlin -- one a former East German cultural functionary, the other a former mid-level spy -- observing life in the former German Democratic Republic after the fall of the Wall in 1989. Grass weaves a deeply human story laced with pain and humor in equal measure.

The rat by Günter Grass ( Book )
69 editions published between 1985 and 2008 in 13 languages and held by 1,829 libraries worldwide
A major new work from Germany's greatest modern writer, this wildly imaginative yet superbly told novel revives some of Grass's most famous characters from his novels The Tin Drum, Headbirths, and The Flounder, as it tells the story of a female rat who engages the narrator in a series of dialogues convincingly demonstrating that the rats will inherit a devastated earth.

Peeling the onion by Günter Grass ( Book )
87 editions published between 2006 and 2009 in 19 languages and held by 1,796 libraries worldwide
Nobel Prize-winning author Gunter Grass remembers his early life, from his boyhood in a cramped two-room apartment in Danzig through the late 1950s, when The Tin Drum was published. During the Second World War, Grass volunteered for the submarine corps at the age of fifteen but was rejected; two years later, in 1944, he was instead drafted into the Waffen-SS. Taken prisoner by American forces as he was recovering from shrapnel wounds, he spent the final weeks of the war in an American POW camp. After the war, Grass resolved to become an artist and moved with his first wife to Paris, where he began to write the novel that would make him famous. Full of the bravado of youth, the rubble of postwar Germany, the thrill of wild love affairs, and the exhilaration of Paris in the early fifties, this book reveals Grass at his most intimate.--From publisher description.