Günter Grass

Günter Wilhelm Grass (born October 16, 1927) is a Nobel Prize-winning German author and playwright. He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland). Since 1945, he has lived in (the now former) West Germany, but in his fiction he frequently returns to the Danzig of his childhood. He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum, a key text in European magic realism. His works frequently have a strong (left wing, socialist) political dimension, and Grass has been an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 2006, Grass caused a controversy with his belated disclosure of Waffen-SS service during the final months of World War II. English-speaking readers probably know Grass best as the author of The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel), published in 1959 (and subsequently filmed by director Volker Schlöndorff in 1979). It was followed in 1961 by the novella Cat and Mouse (Katz und Maus) and in 1963 by the novel Dog Years (Hundejahre), which together with The... full article at wikipedia