The Literature Book

271

Unreliable narrators come

in different guises: some are

liars or conceal facts, others

are unstable, confused, or

manipulative. They may

be immature or unaware,

reporting events that the

reader perceives differently.

See also: Tristram Shandy 104 – 05 ■ The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

188–89 ■ Lolita 260–61 ■ A Clockwork Orange 289 ■ American Psycho 313

POSTWAR WRITING

husband, who runs a grocery store

in the Free City of Danzig (now

Gdansk, Poland), which is under

German control. Oskar is a witness

to real events in history in Danzig

and Düsseldorf but, self-absorbed

and obsessed with his own needs,

he is no hero. Over the years he is

implicated in a string of deaths.

Unlikely truths

Sometimes the narration slips into

the third person, or is passed to

Oskar’s jailer to allow another

perspective. The tone varies: a

slaughter of nuns on a Normandy

beach is scripted like a drawing-

room farce, while Oskar’s poetic

voice both enchants and revolts as

he describes a fisherman hauling

up a horse’s head writhing with

eels. He diverts us down the blind

alleys of his obsessions with art,

circus dwarfs, nurses, and the

scents of women he seduces. He

offers a rational history of Danzig,

then conjures up a nightclub called

the Onion Cellar where people chop

raw onions to make themselves cry.

What does Oskar represent?

Perhaps he is the devil, using

his scream to cut holes in store

windows to tempt passersby

to steal, or seducing women by

ingenious means. Or perhaps he

embodies Grass’s perception of

Germany—immune to suffering

during Nazism and quick to bury

the past. What is certain, however,

is that through Oskar’s grim

magical fantasy the author found a

way to drum history into memory. ■

Günter Grass

Born in 1927 in Danzig (now

Gdansk, Poland) to a German

father and Kashubian mother,

Günter Grass attended the

Conradinum Gymnasium and

was a member of the Hitler

Youth. In late 1944, at the

age of 17, he was drafted into

the Waffen-SS (the Nazi elite

military wing), as he revealed

controversially in 2006.

After the war, Grass

worked as a miner and farm

laborer, and studied art, before

working as a sculptor and

writer in Paris and Berlin. He

published his first poetry and

plays in 1955, but his

breakthrough came in 1959

with The Tin Drum, which

was followed by two more

novels that made up the

Danzig Trilogy. In 1999 he

was awarded the Nobel Prize

in Literature, one of many

awards during his career.

Grass was heavily involved in

German politics, supporting

the Social Democratic Party

and opposing reunification.

He died in 2015 at 87.

Other key works

1961 Cat and Mouse

1963 Dog Years

1999 My Century

2002 Crabwalk

CONCEA L E D FACTS

MENTALLY

UNSTABLE/MAD

The Tin

Drum

Wuthering Heights

LYING/CONFUSED

Midnight’s

Children

The Blind

Assassin

Heart of

Darkness

Tristram

Shandy

The Moonstone

The Turn of the Screw

One Flew over the

Cuckoo’s Nest

American Psycho

The Sound

and the Fury

CHILD

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

To Kill a Mockingbird

The Catcher in the Rye

A Clockwork Orange

Life of Pi

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