Works of Grass -- Mother Mouse

Author: (German) Grass / Wei Yuqing
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: Grass is hailed as the flagship of contemporary German literature. From his literary breakthrough with The Tin Drum in the 1950s to his globally shocking novel My Century at the end of the 1990s, his works have often stirred controversy, making him a major spectacle on the German literary scene. The Rat was met with mixed reviews upon its release in 1986. Admiring critics called it a "futuristic narrative style" that synthesized all of his works, while detractors deemed it a "disaster." Grass himself remained indifferent to the criticism. At the Stockholm award ceremony, he mentioned The Rat by saying, "It won the Nobel Prize in Literature." The novel begins with "I" wanting a rat as a Christmas gift and getting it—this rat can talk and constantly engages in verbal sparring with "I," leading "I" to first become isolated at home, then to drift in space, cut off from Earth, yet in dreams, he witnesses the world's tragedies and experiences the process of human self-destruction.
The second plot centers on Oscar, the protagonist of The Tin Drum, who transforms into a media mogul and returns to his long-estranged hometown of Danzig. He is deeply interested in the potential of media and knows how to use images to depict the future, controlling the public with scenes that are either real or illusory, making it difficult to distinguish between truth and fiction. The other two plots unfold in the form of films. The Forest of the Brothers Grimm reflects the escape and resistance of fairy-tale characters against the backdrop of impending death. The other, The Fakes of the 1950s, tells the story of Marscart, who makes a living restoring artworks, alluding to the historical of the two German leaders, Adenauer and Ulbricht, in the 1950s. The fifth plot follows five women who board an expedition ship to study jellyfish density and research ecological imbalance and environmental pollution. Despite enduring hardships, they ultimately cannot escape the impending catastrophe.