The Life and Work of Gunter Grass: Literature, History, Politics

This book traces the career of the most widely read and influential German novelist in the second half of the Twentieth-century. It shows in particular how his experiences as a teenage Nazi shaped his thinking, both in his novels and his role as critic and campaigner, from The Tin Drum (1959), his most famous novel, to My Century (1999), from his public protest against the building of the Berlin Wall (1961) to his diatribes against Helmut Kohl in the late 1990s. This new paperback edition includes new material on his last two books, My Century and Crabwalk including a revised Bibliography and Chronology.

Table of Contents:
Dedication List of Plates Acknowledgements Chronology PART I: LIFE AND ART Biographies: Real and Imagined Poet, Playwright, and Artist Multi-Talented Art Student Artistic Cross-Connections Idealists, Absolutes and Crypto-Social Democrats: The Plays PART II: LIVES IN HISTORY The World Novel: The Tin Drum Danzig Requiem Scandal Cat and Mouse : Is Pilenz Guilty? After Kafka - After Man Dog Years : Broken Biographies PART III: THE TURN TO POLITICS A Famous Young Man A Broken Intellectual Tradition I Advise You to Vote ES-PE-DE Writers and Politicians The Student Revolt 'I Meant Myself Just as Much': Brecht in the Crossfire in The Plebians Rehearse the Uprising On Cooking Pigs' Heads: Exhaustively Questioned 'Burn, Warehouse, Burn!': Local Anaesthetic Sceptics and Melancholics: From the Diary of a Snail PART IV: THE END OF HISTORY MAN A State of the Nation Novel: The Flounder 'Social-Democratic Rabelais' False Messiahs on Father's Day Feminism and The Flounder Writers and the State in Germany, 1647-1979: The Meeting in Telgte Orwell's Decade A Critical Intellectual in the Post-Modern Era Exotic Encounters Fiction Against the Bomb: The Rat PART V: WRONG SIDE OF THE WENDE The Galloping Weltgeist Grass and the German Question, 1953-1989 Burying the Past or Melting Pot Utopia: The Calls of the Toad Execution of an Author Fonty/Fontane: Broken Biographies in Too Far a Field Making Sense: Finding Truth Postscript: 1997-2002 Guide to Further Reading Index

About the Author :
JULIAN PREECE studied at Oxford University where he completed a doctorate on Gunter Grass in 1991. After appointments at London and Huddersfield, he now teaches German and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Kent. His research concentrates on the intersections between literature and history, and fiction and biography. He is the author (with Waldemar Lotnik) of Nine Lives: Ethnic Conflict in the Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands (1999) and the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Kafka (2002). Since 1994 he has been a co-editor of the Bradford Series of Colloquia on Contemporary German Literature.

Review :

'The study goes far beyond a mere introduction to the man and his work. Rather, in its combination of trenchant analyzes of the major texts, elucidation of the historical-political background, and skilful summary of the major battles Grass fought with his critics as well as other issues that affected his career, the work is a significant achievement that will take its rightful place among the literature on Grass.' - Seigfried Mews, Professor of German, The University of North Carolina

'Preece's book is an admirably comprehensive account of Grass's literary biography right down to the recent best-seller My Century.' - Professor J.H. Reid, Department of German, University of Nottingham

Reviews of hardback edition:

'Julian Preece combines literary analysis and elucidation of the historical-political context that so incisively shaped Grass's generational experience that informs all his writing, fiction and non-fiction, and all his public utterances...Yet the emphasis Preece places on the political, historical, and biographical context does not detract from his careful reading of Grass's texts. In incorporating biographical details...Preece draws attention to a dimension of the text that is often neglected and goes far beyond a mere introduction.' - Siegfried Mews, German Quarterly

'...satisfying...enormously rewarding.' - German Studies Review

'...[for] anyone interested in Grass... [this would] provide a useful or even necessaryfoundation.' - Brad Prager, Seminar

'...well written and well researched and can be read by specialists and non-specialists alike.' - Kerstin T. Gaddy, South Atlantic Review