Tin drum

Author: (German) Grass, G. (Author), Hu Qiding (Translator)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-22
Features: This book is the masterpiece of the renowned German writer Grass, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. At the age of three, Oscar unintentionally discovers his mother's affair with his uncle Laski and witnesses the rampant cruelty of the Nazis, deciding not to grow taller and instead choosing to become a dwarf. From then on, in his perspective, society and the people around him appear bizarre and mad. He spends his days beating on a tin drum to vent his fury against the deformed society and the world. If his father or teacher angers him, he will scream loudly, shattering the windowpanes and the teacher's glasses into pieces. He also uses this to "disrupt" social order, causing trouble for the Nazi rallies. Despite his short stature, he possesses extraordinary intelligence and is exceptionally clever. Faced with his keen insights, his mother dies in shame and sorrow, his father becomes a Nazi officer, and his uncle dies in the war. The neighbor 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 circus troupe to entertain the German army at the front lines. Three years later, he returns home, only to find that the Soviet army has captured Berlin, and his father dies by swallowing the Nazi party badge. While burying his father, Oscar loses his tin drum, and at the same time, his biological son Kurt strikes him on the back of the head with a stone, sending him collapsing into the grave, bleeding profusely. However, from that moment on, he begins to grow taller, and his special ability to shatter glass with screams also disappears. The novel uses black humor to depict a fictional story of Germany's dark history. The film adaptation of this book won the 1980 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.