Grass, Günter "The Box: Tales from the Darkroom"

(German: Die Box. Dunkelkammergeschichten) (Autobiographical Trilogy #2) - 2008


Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read




I think I can easily say that Günter Grass is one of my favourite authors. This novel is the sequel to "Peeling the Onion" (Beim Häuten der Zwiebel), the first book in his autobiographical trilogy.

In this book, he lets his children tell his story, or rather the part of his life where he has the children. There are quite a few of them, six of his own, two of his last wife, they all get together during various events and tell their side of their youth, of growing up together and/or apart. They also tell us about the mysterious photo box of one of the author's friends, Maria Rama. Her camera can show you the past and the future. It shows the wishes and desires of everyone on the pictures. It makes the story even more interesting, more imaginative. What could happen, what could have happened, I like that.

Even though this is more a novel than a real autobiography, I still think it tells a lot about the author's life and that time in Germany. A fascinating story.

I'm looking forward to number three of this series "Grimms Wörter. Eine Liebeserklärung" (Grimm's Words. A Love Declaration).


From the back cover:

"'Once upon a time there was a father who, because he had grown old, called together his sons and daughters - four, five, six, eight in number - and finally convinced them, after long hesitation, to do as he wished. Now they are sitting around a table and begin to talk . .'

In an audacious literary experiment, Günter Grass writes in the voices of his eight children as they record memories of their childhoods, of growing up, of their father, who was always at work on a new book, always at the margins of their lives. Memories contradictory, critical, loving, accusatory - they piece together an intimate picture of this most public of men. To say nothing of Marie, Grass’s assistant, a family friend of many years, perhaps even a lover, whose snapshots taken with an old-fashioned Agfa box camera provide the author with ideas for his work. But her images offer much more. They reveal a truth beyond the ordinary detail of life, depict the future, tell what might have been, grant the wishes in visual form of those photographed. The children speculate on the nature of this magic: was the enchanted camera a source of inspiration for their father? Did it represent the power of art itself? Was it the eye of God?

Recalling J. M. Coetzee’s Summertime and Umberto Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, The Box is an inspired and daring work of fiction. In its candor, wit, and earthiness, it is Grass at his best."

Günter Grass "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.


Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Grass, Günter "Peeling the Onion"

(German: Beim Häuten der Zwiebel) - 2006

Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read

Günter Grass, one of Germany's greatest authors, has written a biography, not just one but three books where he talks about his life, growing up in between the two wars that were going to destroy the Europe that was known before, becoming a German soldier in WWII, spending his years in Russia, coming back to a country that was destroyed, a different part of the country than where he came from, as well. His first steps into becoming an artist, his apprenticeship as a stonemason in order to become a sculptor. Many, many stories.

Günter Grass doesn't keep anything a secret. He mentions how and why he volunteered to go to war. He also describes many events that he was going to use in his many novels later. Even if you haven't read any of his novels, this is a great account not just of the life of a writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature but also of a simple German boy who was born at the wrong time.

If you grew up in post-war Germany with parents who had been about the author's age (like me), a lot of the stories sound familiar (apart from the volunteering part).

Brilliant, remarkable writing. I am not surprised this author received the highest prize you can get.

I read this in the original German edition and am looking forward to the two next parts of the trilogy:

"Die Box. Dunkelkammergeschichten" (The Box: Tales from the Darkroom) (Autobiographical Trilogy #2) - 2008 - 215pp.
"Grimms Wörter. Eine Liebeserklärung" (Autobiographical Trilogy #3, no translation, yet) - 2010

From the back cover:

"In this extraordinary memoir, Nobel Prize-winning author Günter 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, Peeling the Onion -- which caused great controversy when it was published in Germany -- reveals Grass at his most intimate."

As any good author, he has also read a lot and mentions many of them in the book.

Beecher Stowe, Harriet "Uncle Tom's Cabin" - 1852
Coster, Charles de "The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak" - 1867
Dahn, Felix "Ein Kampf um Rom" (A Struggle for Rome) - 1876
Dickens, Charles "David Copperfield" - 1849
Döblin, Alfred "Berlin Alexanderplatz. The Story of Franz Biberkopf" - 1929
Dos Passos, John "Manhattan Transfer" - 1925
Dostoevsky, Fyodor "Demons" - 1872
Dumas, Alexandre "The Three Musketeers" - 1844
Fallada, Hans "Little Man, What Now?" - 1932
Faulkner, William "Light in August" - 1932
Fülöp-Müller, René "Der heilige Teufel. Rasputin und die Frauen" (Rasputin: The Holy Devil) - 1927
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von "Wahlverwandschaften" (Elective Affinities) - 1809
Greene, Graham "The Heart of the Matter" - 1948
Hamsun, Knut "August" - 1930
Hamsun, Knut "Hunger" - 1890
Joyce, James "Ulysses" - 1922
Jünger, Ernst "Storm of Steel" - 1920
Keller, Gottfried "Ferien vom Ich" [Holidays from myself] - 1915
Keller, Gottfried "Green Henry" - 1853
Lagerlöf, Selma "Gösta Berling's Saga" - 1891
Mereschkowski, Dmitry "The Romance of Leonardo da Vinci"
Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand "Jürg Jenatsch. Thirty Years War" - 1876
Miłosz, Czesław "The Captive Mind " - 1953
Raabe, Wilhelm "Chronik der Sperlingsgasse" [Chronicles of Starling Alley] - 1856
Raabe, Wilhelm "Hungerpastor" [Hungerpastor] - 1864
Remarque, Erich Maria "All Quiet on the Western Front" - 1829
Storm, Theodor "Schimmelreiter" (The Rider on the White Horse) - 1888
Wilde, Oscar "The Picture of Dorian Gray" - 1890

And some authors where he didn't mention a particular book.
Aristotle - 384-322 BC
Dickens, Charles - 1812-1870
Heidegger, Martin - 1889-1976
Spinoza, Baruch - 1632-77
Sudermann, Hermann - 1857-1928
Twain, Mark - 1835-1910

Günter Grass "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.


Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Grass, Günter "My Century"

(German: Mein Jahrhundert) - 1999

Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read

Günter Grass is not really one of my favourite authors, not one of my favourite German authors or one of my favourite Nobel Prize authors. However, he is growing on me and has shown why he really deserved the Nobel Prize with this work. One hundred years in one hundred stories, told from different perspectives, from the rich and the poor, the left and the right, those that left and those that stayed. Men, women, children, everyone got the chance to tell their story that is so particular for that part of the century. If you want to understand what Germans went through and achieved in that time, this is a good point to start.

This is not the BIG book about the century, the book that tells us all how things happened, no, these are more little glimpses through the keyhole into the living rooms and into the hearts of all those Germans that lived in the 20th century.

I am not a huge fan of short stories, either. But this is so much more than just a collection of short stories. Many of them sounded familiar to me, either because I myself have lived or seen them, after all, I have seen almost half of that century, or because I have been told them by my parents and grandparents (some of them were even born in the century before). You cannot possibly agree with every single story because they are too different, they show a broad overview over every aspect of life, every political party, every personal viewpoint.

Certainly, there are stories that might need more explanation to someone who knows nothing about German history (besides that they started THE war) but I still believe that this book teaches us something, at least wets the appetite to know more about certain parts of the history.

Some stories are also personal, they are almost like a mini-biography of the author. If you know nothing about him, that might be hard to understand, just see it as part of the trial to bring one country's century into one book. Not an easy task but Günter Grass managed it quite well.

I read the German original of this book.

From the back cover:

"In a work of great originality, Germany's most eminent writer examines the victories and terrors of the twentieth century, a period of astounding change for mankind. Great events and seemingly trivial occurrences, technical developments and scientific achievements, war and disasters, and new beginnings, all unfold to display our century in its glory and grimness. A rich and lively display of Grass's extraordinary imagination, the 100 interlinked stories in this volume-one for each year from 1900 to 1999-present a historical and social portrait for the millennium, a tale of our times in all its grandeur and all its horror."

Günter Grass "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.



Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Grass, Günter "Cat and Mouse"

(German: Katz und Maus. Danziger Trilogie 2) - 1961


Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read



After "The Tin Drum", this is the second book in the Danzig trilogy. Again, we have some young people living in Danzig but the two stories have nothing to do with each other. Plus, the former is a tome, 800+ pages, the second a novella.

However, the writing is as interesting as the first, in the typical Grass style, jumping from one thought to the next, sometimes just fragments, sometimes allusions but always sticking to the story, showing us the looming war, the ever-dominant Hitler and his party that ended and ruined so many lives.

Günter Grass has just a way to make us feel like being there, living through this age of fear and terror, without even describing it, going into the horrible details, they are there, hovering in the background, determining the destiny of everyone involved.

A chilling novel, a gripping book. Günter Grass is certainly one of the greatest German authors.


From the back cover:

"To compensate for his unusually large Adam’s apple - source of both discomfort and distress - fourteen year old Joachim Mahlke turns himself into athlete and ace diver. Soon he is known to his peers and his nation as 'The Great Mahlke'. But to his enemies, he remains a target. He is different and doomed in a country scarred by the war.

Cat and Mouse was first published in 1961, two years after Gunter Grass’ controversial and applauded masterpiece, The Tin Drum. Once again Grass turns his attention on Danzig. With a subtle blend of humour and power, Cat and Mouse ostensibly relates the rise of Mahlke from clown to hero. But Mahlke’s outlandish antics hide the darkness at the heart of a nation torn by Nazi violence, the war, and its aftermath."

Günter Grass "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

When visiting Lübeck a couple of years ago, I was happy to be able to visit the house where he lived. You can read about my experience here.


Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Grass, Günter "The Tin Drum"

(German: Die Blechtrommel. Danziger Trilogie 1) - 1959

Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read



Günter Grass is one of my favourite Nobel Prize winners, certainly one of the best German authors we ever had. His style is unique, his language superb.

How to describe this book? To even try would be like rewriting the whole story which is, of course, impossible.

Why is it so important? The story represents not only a part of our history that is told from a completely different perspective than most books of the war, it also describes how many things could have been through the magic realism genre.

Oscar Matzerath was born in the then free city of Danzig (now the Polish city Gdańsk). When he is three years old, he decides not to grow anymore. He tells us the story of his grandmother and through his narration we go through WWII, the occupation of Poland and the post-war life of many refugees who went to West Germany.

Oscar incorporates many different characters, the grown-up child, the obsessive drummer, the evil of this world, the actor who wants to show us how it's done. He is many people in one, hard to grasp but so much one of us that we seem to know him.

This is certainly not one of the easiest books to read but it is totally worth it. It is a story you will never forget. I will continue reading the two other books of the "Danzig Trilogy": "Cat and Mouse" (Katz und Maus) and "Dog Years" (Hundejahre).

Like many other successful books, "The Tin Drum" was made into a film and received the Academy Award for best Foreign Language Picture.

From the back cover:

"Meet Oskar Matzerath, 'the eternal three-year-old drummer.' On the morning of his third birthday, dressed in a striped pullover and patent leather shoes, and clutching his drumsticks and his new tin drum, young Oskar makes an irrevocable decision: 'It was then that I declared, resolved, and determined that I would never under any circumstances be a politician, much less a grocer; that I would stop right there, remain as I was - and so I did; for many years I not only stayed the same size but clung to the same attire.' Here is a Peter Pan story with a vengeance. But instead of Never-Never Land, Günter Grass gives us Danzig, a contested city on the Polish-German border; instead of Captain Hook and his pirates, we have the Nazis. And in place of Peter himself is Oskar, a twisted puer aeternis with a scream that can shatter glass and a drum rather than a shadow. First published in 1959, The Tin Drum's depiction of the Nazi era created a furor in Germany, for the world of Grass's making is rife with corrupt politicians and brutal grocers in brown shirts: 

There was once a grocer who closed his store one day in November, because something was doing in town; taking his son Oskar by the hand, he boarded a Number 5 streetcar and rode to the Langasser Gate, because there as in Zoppot and Langfuhr the synagogue was on fire. The synagogue had almost burned down and the firemen were looking on, taking care that the flames should not spread to other buildings. Outside the wrecked synagogue, men in uniform and others in civilian clothes piled up books, ritual objects, and strange kinds of cloth. The mound was set on fire and the grocer took advantage of the opportunity to warm his fingers and his feelings over the public blaze. 

As Oskar grows older (though not taller), portents of war transform into the thing itself. Danzig is the first casualty when, in the summer of 1939, residents turn against each other in a pitched battle between Poles and Germans. In the years that follow, Oskar goes from one picaresque adventure to the next - he joins a troupe of traveling musicians; he becomes the leader of a group of anarchists; he falls in love; he becomes a recording artist - until some time after the war, he is convicted of murder and confined to a mental hospital. 

The Tin Drum uses savage comedy and a stiff dose of magical realism to capture not only the madness of war, but also the black cancer at the heart of humanity that allows such degradations to occur. Grass wields his humor like a knife - yes, he'll make you laugh, but he'll make you bleed, as well. There have been many novels written about World War II, but only a handful can truly be called great; The Tin Drum, without a doubt, is one. - Alix Wilber"

Günter Grass "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.


Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Crabwalk by Günter Grass

Originally reviewed by Edith LaGraziana

on Edith's Miscellany

As time passes, ideas may go out of fashion or even become kind of taboo, but once in the world they never disappear completely. These days, fascist ideas including national socialist ones see an alarming revival all around the world thanks to – for the moment still – democratic movements that prudently deny their roots. Such pretended nationalistic and patriotic, but actually racist ideologies make believe that they can put the unfathomable chaos of the modern world in a clear order and especially the young are easy prey for the populist demagogues who cunningly preach them taking advantage of the growing discontent in the population over living conditions and cultural diversity. In the novel Crabwalk by en-NOBEL-ed German writer Günter Grass a journalist from Berlin retraces his own and his mother’s lives to understand how their history encouraged his son to write a Nazi blog and to kill his pretended Jewish counterpart.

Grass, Günter "Crabwalk"

(German Title: Im Krebsgang) - 2002

Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read 

This book had been my suggestion because we always look for novels by authors from different countries. We haven't read many German books, so I thought, let's read a Grass. This author has never been an "easy" person, born in Danzig to Polish-German parents, raised Catholic, moved to West Germany as a young guy, he is strongly left-wing and will say what he thinks needs saying. He is a journalist and a sculptor/graphic artist.

A lot of our members found the book very hard to read. Why do translations of books into English always have to be so bad? We've made this experience again and again. Mind you, in this case, I can't really blame the translator too much, a lot of the conversations, especially by the narrator's mother, are in Pomeranian and even difficult to read in the original German version.

We had various members who started a couple of times until they finally finished it. Some of their remarks: I appreciate that he wrote it. This book caused a big stir in Germany when it came out I understand German shame factor. I realized how oppressive and burdensome it is for children to have to live with parents' ambitions. Paul Pokriefke wanted to be a normal person, his mother Tulla wrote him off completely and transferred all her ambitions to her grandson. Germans shouldn't dwell on their past. A lot of people don't want them to forget, the hatred is still there. They show it on TV, remind you every year. "Victimization gives them power." I appreciated the father's love for his son, he stands by him. You need not stand up against this great machine. What is going on at the moment? We talked about the Neo-Nazism in several European countries. The truth is, all European countries had and have Nazis.

Even though this was probably one of the toughest reads for most, it was a great foundation for a very interesting discussion. It leads to so many different topics. I don't think anyone should be surprised to know that the author was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Oh, and someone remarked they were astonished by the fast that there were six times as many deaths on the Wilhelm Gustloff as there were on the Titanic, yet you never hear about it.

From the back cover:
"Günter 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."

Günter Grass "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Crabwalk by Günter Grass

This is the first I've read by Günter Grass,, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

Grass is struggling with the collective guilt of the German people. The narrator of the story is a hack journalist who is reluctantly drawn into researching the unusual circumstances of his birth, In a lifeboat, after the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff by a Russian sub in 1945.

It's cunningly written. Paul Pokriefke, the journalist, doesn't want to know about the past, and is almost vitriolic about his mother, who is always going on about it. These two symbolise Germany's dilemma - Ursula/Tilla has had a traumatic experience and needs to talk about it, but is denied any therapeutic release because of the German culture of silence about their wartime suffering. Paul just doesn't want to know. He's the next generation, with no memory of the event, and he just wants to get on with his life, even if what he's doing isn't particularly worthwhile. He fails to see that some of his lack of direction is due to the circumstances of his birth, but he is able to blame his mother for being so promiscuous that he can't know who is father was, whereas if he were less judgemental he would admit that he could just as easily have been fatherless if his father died in the war.

What forces Paul to confront his, and Germany's history, is his own son's neo-Nazi proclivities...