Crab Walk (Exquisite)--Grass Collection

Author: (German) Grass, translated by Cai Hongjun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: This book is a new work by Grass released after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. It received widespread acclaim upon its release, topped major bestseller lists for consecutive months, and sold 250,000 copies within two weeks. The novel is based on a true historical event: on January 30, 1945, the German luxury liner "Gustloff" set sail from Gdansk, carrying over 10,000 refugees and soldiers toward the west. However, that night, it was sunk by torpedoes fired by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea, resulting in nearly 10,000 escapees drowning, including over 4,000 children! The novel uses a combination of realism and fiction to expose the perpetrators of that war, showing how it brought heavy disasters to other countries while inflicting endless suffering on its own people. This is a maritime disaster even more heart-wrenching than the "Titanic." The fictional story in the book is also brutal: Tula, pregnant and only 17 years old, boarded the "Gustloff." Around nine o'clock at night, a violent and several fierce explosions jolted her out of her sleep. Fortunately, she was rescued onto a German warship. As the cruise ship 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 held her newborn in her arms and continued her escape, eventually arriving in Zemlin in East Germany and becoming a worker. Paul grew up to become a journalist, fled to West Germany, and after experiencing marriage, having children, and family divorce, he was long separated from his son Konrad. After the reunification of the two Germanys, Konrad finally met his grandmother. The grandmother adored him and often told him about her past experiences, which led him to develop extremist views. He created a neo-Nazi website and, in the end, 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 terrible history and tell its impact, especially on a particular group.