Synopsis
Grass's unusual novel about German life during the Nazi era is a powerful examination of the psyche of a country. It consists of three sections--the first, narrated by Herr Brauxel (a.k.a. Eddi Amsel), the second and third by his childhood friends Harry Liebenau (whose portion of the book consists of love letters to his cousin) and Walter Matern, an actor. Eddi is Jewish, Matern Catholic, but the two, opposite in many ways, consider themselves "blood brothers." During the war, however, Matern becomes a Nazi Stormtrooper who persecutes Eddi by beating him up and knocking out his teeth. The underlying theme of Grass's complex and many-layered story is the way in which the artist can transform evil into art.
| Details | | Publication Date: | 1989-10-01 |
| Size | | Height: | 8.5 in | | Width: | 5.8 in | | Thickness: | 1.8 in | | Weight: | 25.6 oz |
Publisher's Note
In this vast novel, packed with incident, Gunter Grass traces the dark labyrinth of the German mentality as it developed during the rise, fall, and aftermath of the Third Reich.
Industry Reviews
"I don't think I have read any other post-war novel in which this diligent sense of life's interrelatedness and unity has been set down in such iron sentences or, through patient assembly of the fruits of exact examination made so stark...The book is a work of genius, no matter how cantankerous, willful, filthy, tedious, brutal, nihilistic, long-winded, importunate, self-conscious or Germany-obsessed you find it. If execution can be lyrical, then 'Dog Years' is that...Ralph Manheim's translation, an impossible task, brings into being an English that might give pause to English-writing novelists themselves. If, of course, this stupendous, lethal graffito doesn't stop them dead in their tracks in the first place."
Nation - Paul West (08/16/1965)
"'Hundejahre' ['Dog Years'] confirms what was already apparent in 'The Tin Drum' and 'Cat and Mouse'. Grass is the strongest, most inventive writer to have emerged in Germany since 1945. He stomps like a boisterous giant through a literature often marked by slim volumes of whispered lyricism. The energy of his devices, the scale on which he works, are fantastic....Grass's prose has a torrential, viscous energy; it is full of rubble and acrid shards. It scars and bruises the landscape into bizarre, eloquent forms."
Commentary - George Steiner (05/01/1964)
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