The Tin Drum

The Tin Drum, one of the great novels of the twentieth century, was published in Ralph Manheim’s outstanding translation in 1959. It became a runaway bestseller and catapulted its young author to the forefront of world literature.
This fiftieth anniversary edition, translated by Breon Mitchell, is more faithful to Grass’s style and rhythm, restores omissions, and reflects more fully the complexity of the original work. After fifty years, The Tin Drum has, if anything, gained in power and relevance. All of Grass’s amazing evocations are still there, and still amazing: Oskar Matzerath, the indomitable drummer; his grandmother, Anna Koljaiczek; his mother, Agnes; Alfred Matzerath and Jan Bronski, his presumptive fathers. And Oskar’s midget friends—Bebra, the great circus master, and Roswitha Raguna, the famous somnambulist; Sister Scholastica and Sister Agatha, the Right Reverend Father Wiehnke, the Greffs, the Schefflers, Herr Fajngold, all Kashubians, Poles, Germans, and Jews—waiting to be discovered and rediscovered.

Acclaimed as the greatest German novel written since the end of World War II, The Tin Drum is the autobiography of thirty-year-old Oskar Matzerath, who has lived through the long Nazi nightmare and who, as the novel begins, is being held in a mental institution. Willfully stunting his growth at three feet for many years, wielding his tin drum and piercing scream as anarchistic weapons, he provides a profound yet hilarious perspective on both German history and the human condition of the modern world.

About the Author:

Günter Grass was born in 1927 in Danzig. Active as an artist, poet, and playwright, he has lived in Paris and traveled widely in Europe. At present he lives in Berlin with his wife and twin sons.

The Tin Drum, the author s first novel, has been translated into all major European languages. A film version of the book received an Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1980. His other works include Cat and Mouse, The Flounder, Headbirths, and The Rat.

In 1999, Günter Grass was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Washington Post - Michael Dirda

With a magic-realist brio, The Tin Drum mixes fantasy, gallows humor, several pathetic love stories, a tragic family saga, a classic bildungsroman and a powerful account of how great political events affect—usually disastrously—a small group of ordinary people. It grabs your attention from the very first words…The Tin Drum…remains a very great novel, as daring and imaginative as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude or Toni Morrison's Beloved.

GÜNTER GRASS was born in Danzig, Germany, in 1927. He is the widely acclaimed author of numerous books, including The Tin Drum, My Century, Crabwalk, and Peeling the Onion. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

BREON MITCHELL is a professor of Germanic studies and comparative literature and the director of the Lilly Library at Indiana University.