Works of Grass: Vast Plains

Author: (German) Grass
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: "Depicting the forgotten side of history through playful black fables" is a major characteristic of Nobel Prize laureate Grass in 20th-century novel writing. In this book, the author still employs his 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 an elementary school teacher in the Soviet-occupied zone, assisting the government in ideological education and receiving multiple awards. However, he later faced purging within the party and was dismissed due to his advocacy of freedom, especially after his three sons "defected to the West." After the reunification of the two Germanys, he was reappointed as a consultant by the Treuhand. At this time, he could not help but sigh, "Our republic is finished," expressing his reluctance to part with the workers' and peasants' regime. In the cheers of the celebration for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two Germanys in front of the Reichstag, people once again heard Finte's discordant voice, "A full moon is good, but a waning moon is better." As time passed, Finte's disappointment with the reunified Germany grew. The tycoons from the West, under the guise of "cleaning up," engaged in large-scale opportunistic exploitation, forcing the Treuhand, where Finte worked, to push tens of thousands of East German citizens onto the streets, compelling them to join the ranks of the unemployed. In people's minds, "cleaning up" became a synonym for "murder." At this point, Finte was given a new task: to find a new term to replace the infamous "cleaning up." Only then did Finte realize: the freedom and democracy people pursued were actually like this! Later, he quietly escaped from Berlin with his French granddaughter and drove toward a vast wilderness.