Tin drum

Author: (German) Grass
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: Grass (1927-), a highly influential contemporary German writer and the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. The Tin Drum is his masterpiece. At the age of three, Oscar accidentally discovers his mother and uncle Bruno engaging in an affair and witnesses the rampant cruelty of the Nazis, deciding not to grow taller and instead becoming a dwarf. From then on, in his perspective, society and the people around him appear bizarre and mad. He spends his days beating a tin drum to vent his frustration against the deformed society and the world. Despite his short stature, he possesses extraordinary intelligence and is exceptionally clever. The neighboring girl Maria comes to care for him, and they engage in sexual relations. After she becomes pregnant, she marries his father and gives birth to Kurt. Oscar joins a dwarf magazine troupe to visit the front lines to comfort German troops and returns home three years later. By then, the Soviet army has captured Berlin, and his father dies by swallowing the Nazi party badge. While burying his father, Oscar loses the tin drum, and his biological son Kurt strikes him on the back of the head with a stone, causing him to fall into the grave and bleed profusely. However, from that moment on, he begins to grow taller.