Download or read book G nter Grass and His Critics written by Siegfried Mews and published by Camden House. This book was released on 2008 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive narrative overview and analysis of the criticism of the controversial German author's works. When the Swedish Academy announced that Günter Grass had been awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, it singled out his first novel The Tin Drum (1959, English translation 1963) as a seminal work that had signaled thepostwar rebirth of German letters, auguring "a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction." Nearly fifty years after its publication, the novel's significance has been generally acknowledged: it is the uncontested favorite among Grass's works of fiction on the part of reading public and critics alike, yet its canonical status tends to obscure the decidedly mixed and even hostile reactions it initially elicited. Along with The Tin Drum, Grass's impressive body of literary work since the 1950s has spawned a cottage industry of Grass criticism, making a reliable guide through the thicket of sometimes contradictory readings a definite desideratum. SiegfriedMews fills this lacuna in Grass scholarship by way of a detailed but succinct, descriptive as well as analytical and evaluative overview of the scholarship from 1959 to 2005. Grass's politically motivated interventions in publicdiscourse have kept him highly visible, blurring the boundaries between politics and aesthetics. Mews therefore examines not only academic criticism but also the daily and weekly press (and other news media), providing additionalinsight into the reception of Grass's works. Siegfried Mews is Professor of German at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Download or read book Crabwalk written by Günter Grass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2004 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hailed by critics and readers alike as Gnter Grass's best book since The Tin Drum, Crabwalk is an engrossing account of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and a critical meditation on Germany's struggle with its wartime memories. The Gustloff, a German cruise ship turned refugee carrier, was attacked by a Soviet submarine in January 1945. Some nine thousand 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. For his teenage son, who dabbles in the dark, far-right corners of the Internet, the Gustloff embodies the denial of Germany's suffering. 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.
Download or read book Peeling the Onion written by Günter Grass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2008 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The G nter Grass Reader written by Günter Grass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2004 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sample Text
Download or read book German History 1770 1866 written by James J. Sheehan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 998 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a uniquely authoritative study of German history between the mid-eighteenth century and the formation of the Bismarckian Reich. This is an extensive account of social and cultural, as well as political developments and shows that the creation of a Prussian-led nation-state should not be seen as 'natural' or inevitable.
Download or read book My Century written by Günter Grass and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, Gunter Grass writes of great events and seemingly trivial ones, of technical developments and scientific discoveries, of achievements in culture, sport, of megolamania, persecution and murder, war and disasters and of new beginnnings.
Download or read book The Tin Drum written by Günter Grass and published by Vintage Books USA. This book was released on 1964 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The greatest German novel since the end of World War II, The Tin Drum is the autobiography of Oskar Matzerath, thirty years old, detained in a mental hospital, convicted of a murder he did not commit. On the day of his third birthday, Oskar had "declared, resolved, and determined [to] stop right there, remain as I was, stay the same size, cling to the same attire" (striped pullover and patent-leather shoes). That same day Oskar receives his first tin drum, and from then on it is the means of his expression, allowing him to draw forth memories from the past as well as judgments about the horrors, injustices, and eccentricities he observes through the long nightmare of the Nazi era. As that era ebbs bloodily away, as drum succeeds drum, Oskar participates in the German postwar economic miracle -- working variously in the black market, as an artist's model, in a troupe of traveling musicians. With the onset of affluence and fame, Oskar decides to grow a few inches, only to develop a humpback. But despite his newfound status (and stature), Oskar remains haunted by the deaths of his parents, afflicted by his responsibility for past sins -- and so assumes guilt for a murder he did not commit as an act of atonement and an opportunity to find consolation.The rhythms of Oskar's drums are intricate and insistent, and they lead us, often by way of shocking fantasies, through the dark forest of German history. Through Oskar's piercing, outspoken voice and deformed little figure, through the imaginative distortion and exaggeration of historical experience, a pathetically hilarious yet startlingly true portrayal of the human situation comes into view.
Download or read book Of All That Ends written by Günter Grass and published by HMH. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A final book like no other” from the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Tin Drum: poetry and meditations on writing, aging, and living until the end (The Irish Times). In spite of the trials of old age, and with the end in sight, Günter Grass weaves his life’s reflections together into a witty and elegiac swansong: love letters, soliloquies, jealous musings, social satire, and moments of happiness long to be shared. As the inimitable German fabulist lives his remaining days, his passion for writing spurs in him new life. His final work is a creation filled with wisdom and defiance. In a striking interplay of poetry, lyric prose, and drawings, this diverse assemblage is a moving farewell gift—a sensual, melancholy summation of a life fully lived. “Elegant musings on dying and, most poignantly, living.” —Kirkus Reviews “A glorious gift, a final salute true to the singular creativity of the most human, and humane, of artists.” —The Irish Times “A thoughtful, uncompromising meditation on death and aging . . . He describes loss, change, and memory with a combination of melancholy and wit.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Cat and Mouse written by Günter Grass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1991 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The setting is Danzig during World War II. The narrator recalls a boyhood scene in which a black cat pounces on his friend Mahlke's "mouse"-his prominent Adam's apple. This incident sets off a wild series of events that ultimately leads to Mahlke's becoming a national hero. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
Download or read book The Box written by Günter Grass and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this delightful sequel to Peeling the Onion, 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? Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Download or read book Danzig Trilogy of Gunter Grass written by John Reddick and published by Mariner Books. This book was released on 1975 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical examination of Grass's work offers overwhelming evidence that Cat and Mouse and Dog Years are part of a unified structure begun by The Tin Drum and that they continue to explore the same key figures, themes, and symbols. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.
Download or read book From the Diary of a Snail written by Günter Grass and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-06-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Probably the most autobiographical of his novels, From the Diary of a Snail balances the agonising history of the persecuted Danzig Jews with an account of Grass's political campaigning with Willie Brandt. Underlying all is the snail, the central symbol that is both model and a parody of social progress, and a mysterious metaphor for political reform. From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and author of The Tin Drum.
Download or read book Speak Silence written by Carole Angier and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A SPECTATOR, NEW STATESMAN AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'The best biography I have read in years' Philippe Sands 'Spectacular' Observer 'A remarkable portrait' Guardian W. G. Sebald was one of the most extraordinary and influential writers of the twentieth century. Through books including The Emigrants, Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn, he pursued an original literary vision that combined fiction, history, autobiography and photography and addressed some of the most profound themes of contemporary literature: the burden of the Holocaust, memory, loss and exile. The first biography to explore his life and work, Speak, Silence pursues the true Sebald through the memories of those who knew him and through the work he left behind. This quest takes Carole Angier from Sebald's birth as a second-generation German at the end of the Second World War, through his rejection of the poisoned inheritance of the Third Reich, to his emigration to England, exploring the choice of isolation and exile that drove his work. It digs deep into a creative mind on the edge, finding profound empathy and paradoxical ruthlessness, saving humour, and an elusive mix of fact and fiction in his life as well as work. The result is a unique, ferociously original portrait.
Download or read book To Die in Spring written by Ralf Rothmann and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lunacy of the final months of World War II, as experienced by a young German soldier Distant, silent, often drunk, Walter Urban is a difficult man to have as a father. But his son—the narrator of this slim, harrowing novel—is curious about Walter’s experiences during World War II, and so makes him a present of a blank notebook in which to write down his memories. Walter dies, however, leaving nothing but the barest skeleton of a story on those pages, leading his son to fill in the gaps himself, rightly or wrongly, with what he can piece together of his father’s early life. This, then, is the story of Walter and his dangerously outspoken friend Friedrich Caroli, seventeen-year-old trainee milkers on a dairy farm in northern Germany who are tricked into volunteering for the army during the spring of 1945: the last, and in many ways the worst, months of the war. The men are driven to the point of madness by what they experience, and when Friedrich finally deserts his post, Walter is forced to do the unthinkable. Told in a remarkable impressionistic voice, focusing on the tiny details and moments of grotesque beauty that flower even in the most desperate situations, Ralf Rothmann’s To Die in Spring “ushers in the post–[Günter] Grass era with enormous power” (Die Zeit).
Download or read book The Echo of Die Blechtrommel in Europe written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-07-11 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Echo of Die Blechtrommel in Europe presents an overview and analysis of the critical reception of Günter Grass’s classic novel throughout Europe. Starting from the reviews on its first publication in Germany in 1959, it follows the reception of its translations in Poland, Italy, the UK, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Finland and Sweden. Press reviews for the general public form the main object of research in this volume. The articles reveal the different roles played by religious, political and ideological matters in the reception of the novel in the respective European countries. The articles, written by specialists from the countries under study, also reveal national differences and resemblances in the institutions of literary life in Europe.
Download or read book On Writing and Politics 1967 1983 written by Günter Grass and published by HarperVia. This book was released on 1986 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grass-novelist, poet, and graphic artist-is also a committed political activist. In this collection of essays, he takes on writing and politics with his accustomed verve and insight. Introduction by Salman Rushdie. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
Download or read book Too Far Afield written by Günter Grass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
