GRRRRRR The Tin Drum ~~ this damn exasperating book. It’s one of the best written, most difficult, utterly amazing, truly frustrating books I’ve ever read. I don’t even know where to begin with this review. Turns out he's playing the long game as things become more focused in the second part, which is a series of letters from someone on the periphery of events to his cousin, further describing not only the changing friendship between Walter and Edward but the world of ballet dancing and the changing emotions of the times as Germany starts to go off the rails into fairly scary territory. The nod to an epistolary style is much easier to digest and feels like a breath of fresh air compared to the denser earlier part. During the War, Oskar supports either the Polish opposition or the Nazis (even though he doesn't particularly like the Nazis), depending on what's convenient for him. He has lied to his family half his life. He himself corrects lies he has told you half a book before - putting an asterisk on everything he says. He tells you he deliberately stopped growing - and faked an accident to provide the world reason for that. The fact that a lot of information comes from his drum is not too much satisfying either. He is using both first-person pronouns and his name to talk about himself - at times in the same sentence. A cualquiera que intentara quitarme el tambor le rompí, quebré, e hice añicos, a grito de chillidos, cristales de ventanas, vasos llenos de cerveza llenos, botellas de cerveza vacías, frascos de perfume, platones de adorno, y en una palabra toda clase de objetos de vidrio manufacturados por el vidriera, en parte como simple vidrio o como artístico."

Volviendo a la novela, el pequeño Oscar vive al principio con su madre, su padre biológico y el amante de su madre. De esta manera, ese triángulo entre Oscar, Alfred Matzerath y el polaco Jan Bronski llevarán a cabo gran parte de los episodios y sucesos que aparecerán a lo largo de la novela. Con la aparición de María mucho más adelante que se transformará en su novia y en la madre de su hijo Kurt, Oscar decidirá girar en 180° para buscar un destino que lo lleve donde él quiera, eso sí: siempre acompañado por su tambor de hojalata. Not-coming-of-age story ... Günter Grass, David Bennent and Volker Schlöndorff during shooting of the 1979 film adaptation of The Tin Drum. Photograph: United Artists/EPAThe novel begins with a somewhat bizarre scene. On a cold autumn day in 1899, Anna Bronski is sitting on a potato field as she watches a man fleeing from police officers. She offers him shelter under her four skirts, which she is wearing to keep herself warm. In this cozy hiding place, Joseph, the man, sires a girl calledAgnes. Not caring for the world he is growing up in, a small boy determines to remain a child. The epic sweep of Grass' novel satirises German nationalism and the rise and fall of the Nazi movement. I love this book for its creativity, its vividness and how it delivers its message. The writing is a real treat.

Acclaimed as the greatest German novel written since the end of World War II, The Tin Drum is the autobiography of thirty-year-old Oskar Matzerath, who has lived through the long Nazi nightmare and who, as the novel begins, is being held in a mental institution. Willfully stunting his growth at three feet for many years, wielding his tin drum and piercing scream as anarchistic weapons, he provides a profound yet hilarious perspective on both German history and the human condition of the modern world. Novels, notably The Tin Drum (1959) and Dog Years (1963), of German writer Günter Wilhelm Grass, who won the Nobel Prize of 1999 for literature, concern the political and social climate of Germany during and after World War II. This refers to Oskar's ability (also unknown to the adults, except his mother) to "sing shatter" glass, that is to sing a high note which shatters glass. Roswitha Raguna: Bebra's mistress, then Oskar's. She is a beautiful Italian lady, but taller than Oskar, she has nevertheless chosen not to grow. She is the most celebrated somnambulist in all parts of Italy.Sanctuary, at least for some people, may best be found in an insane asylum. From his white-enamelled metal hospital bed, under the watchful, if bewildered eye of Bruno, his nurse, Oskar Matzerath sets out with the help of a family photograph album to tell not only his story but also that of his country. Its graphic content and critical depiction of the Wehrmacht enraged the country’s churches and soldiers. Senators in the Bremen vetoed Grass from being awarded its literature prize; years later, in 1997, the US state of Oklahoma tried to ban the film version for depicting Matzerath performing oral sex on a teenage girl. Günter Grass :The Tin Drum, Vintage / Random House (German title: Die Blechtrommel, 1959). English translation:Ralph Manheim andBreon Mitchell. The Tin Drum to me is one of the most oppressively true novels ever written, on equal terms with Midnight's Children or One Hundred Years of Solitude for its exploration of human irrationality and excess. In some respects it is more difficult to digest because it hits closer to home. But at the same time, it enhanced the powerful effect of the Asian and South American versions of human failure to live properly as I know from The Tin Drum that the deeper truth of chaos is a more sane description of reality than the insane project of writing "objective" accounts.