Tin Drum (Paperback: VINTAGE INTL: 592 pages)

Enhanced Muze Note

In the more than 20 years since its publication, [THE TIN DRUM] has not yet been surpassed; it is the greatest novel by a living author.

Enhanced Muze Note

...Herr Grass's narrative moves with extraordinary virtuosity from the most graphic naturalistic description to passages of verbal exuberance and lyrical or satirical fantasy...because Herr Grass has a quite exceptional capacity for conveying the feel, colour and smell of experience, it is the sheer vividness and body of this novel to which one immediately responds.

Enhanced Muze Note

In 'The Tin Drum', Günter Grass has written a novel without equal so far in post-war Germany...Grass's book is a major romantic novel which, in its carefully designed structure and economical use of a welter of incidents, approaches classicism....What makes 'The Tin Drum' spellbinding, however, is something beyond story and style; it is the hauntedness of its author, and the personal myths he creates, full of urgency and driving power.

Enhanced Muze Note

Here he comes to grips with the enormous task of reviewing contemporary history by recalling the disavowed and the forgotten: the victims, losers and lies that people wanted to forget because they had once believed in them," the academy said in a statement. It is not too audacious to assume that THE TIN DRUM will become one of the enduring literary works of the 20th century,