Günter Grass, German Novelist and Social Critic, Dies at 87

[marylander1940]

Günter Grass, the German novelist, social critic and Nobel Prize winner whom many called his country’s moral conscience but who stunned Europe when he revealed in 2006 that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS during World War II, died on Monday. He was 87.

 

Mr. Grass’s publisher, Steidl Verlag, said the author died in a clinic in the northern city of Lübeck, which had been his home for decades. No cause of death was given.

 

Mr. Grass was hardly the only member of his generation who obscured the facts of his wartime life. But because he was a pre-eminent public intellectual who had pushed Germans to confront the ugly aspects of their history, his confession that he had falsified his own biography shocked readers and led some to view his life’s work in a different light.

 

nuclear program. He expressed revulsion at the idea that Israel might be justified in attacking Iran over a perceived nuclear threat and said that it “endangers the already fragile world peace.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/world/europe/gunter-grass-german-novelist-dies-at-87.html?_r=0

 

[marylander1940]

[Rudynate]

I read "Local Anesthetic" in the 70's. It was an anti-war novel. I slogged through it, but my memory is that it was pretty tedious.

[+ Charlie]

The Tin Drum is one of the classics of modern German literature. I like reading important novels in the original language when I can, but I put off reading reading it in German for years, because it was so long. When I finally did, I loved it.

[+ WilliamM]

I read "The Tin Drum" in South Vietnam" in 1968. Somehow the superb book fit in with the chaos of the war. It's not an easy book, but more that worth the effort. It's ironic that two of Germany greatest writers are so associated with Lubeck. Thomas Mann's first novel, "Buddenbrooks," was based on growing up in Lubeck. The book was mentioned promanently in his 1929 Nobel Prize for Literature citation. Mann moved to Munich, and never lived in Germany after the National Socialists came to power in 1933. Anyone know why Gunter Grass chose Lubeck as his home.?

[Rudynate]

The Tin Drum is one of the classics of modern German literature. I like reading important novels in the original language when I can, but I put off reading reading it in German for years, because it was so long. When I finally did, I loved it.

 

 

Maybe I didn't find "Local Anesthetic" that tedious. Just read a synopsis of "The Tin Drum" and I'm sure I read it. If I read two of Gunther Grass's books, I must have found the first one worthwhile.