Vast plains Grass collection

Author: Grass
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2005-01-01
Features: "Depicting the forgotten side of history through playful black fables" is a major characteristic of the Nobel Prize-winning author Grass in his novel writing. In this book, the author still employs this habitual writing technique. During World War II, Finte went to the front as a war correspondent and met a French girl, Martha. Influenced by her, he joined the radio work of the resistance movement. After the war, Finte worked as a primary school teacher in the Soviet-occupied zone, assisting the government with ideological education and receiving multiple awards. However, later, due to his transgressive advocacy of freedom, especially after his three sons "defected to the West," he was purged within the party and dismissed. After the reunification of the two German states, he was again put to use, appointed as an advisor by the Treuhand agency. At this time, he could not help but sigh, "Our republic is finished," expressing his lingering attachment to the workers' and peasants' regime. In the cheers of celebration at the Reichstag for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two German states, people once again heard Finte's discordant voice, "A full moon is good, but a waning moon is even better." As time passed, Finte's disappointment with the reunified Germany grew. The tycoons from the West, under the guise of "purging," engaged in extensive opportunistic exploitation, even forcing thousands of East German citizens to join the ranks of the unemployed through the Treuhand agency where Finte worked. In people's minds, "purging" became synonymous with "murder." At this time, Finte was given a new task: to find a new term to replace the infamous "purging." Finte finally came to realize: the freedom and democracy people pursued were actually like this! Later, he quietly escaped from Berlin with his French granddaughter and drove into a vast wilderness.