Crab walk

Author: (German) Grass
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: This book is a new work released by Grass after winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. It received widespread acclaim upon its release, topping major bestseller lists for several months, and sold 250,000 copies within two weeks. The novel is based on a real historical event: On January 30, 1945, the German luxury liner the Gustloff set sail from Gdynia, Poland, loaded with over 10,000 refugees and soldiers, heading west. However, that night, the ship was sunk by torpedoes fired by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea, killing nearly 10,000 escapees, over 4,000 of whom were children! The novel uses a combination of realism and fiction to expose the perpetrators of that war, who brought heavy to other countries while inflicting endless suffering on their own people. This is a maritime disaster even more heart-wrenching than the Titanic. And the fictional story in the book is also brutal: Thula, pregnant and only 17, boarded the Gustloff. Around 9 p.m., a violent tremor and several loud explosions jolted her out of her sleep. Fortunately, she was rescued onto a German ship. As the liner sank and the bodies of thousands of children and women floated up and down in the icy sea, her son Paul was born. After being rescued, she fled with her newborn in her arms, eventually reaching Szczecin in East Germany and becoming a worker. Paul grew up to be a journalist, fled to West Germany, and after experiencing marriage, having children, and family divorce, he was long separated from his son Konrad. It wasn’t until German reunification that Konrad met his grandmother. The grandmother adored him and often told him about the past, which led him to develop extremist views. He created a neo-Nazi website and finally shot and killed a Jewish young man named David online. German media described Grass as using heart-stirring prose to take readers back to that terrifying history and tell its impact, especially on a particular group.