On his third birthday Oskar decides to stop growing. Haunted by the deaths of his parents and wielding his tin drum Oskar recounts the events of his extraordinary life; from the long nightmare of the Nazi era to his anarchic adventures in post-war Germany.

An alternate cover for this isbn can be found here. To compensate for his unusually large Adam’s apple—source of both discomfort and distress—fourteen year old Joachim Mahlke turns himself into athlete and ace diver. Soon he is known to his peers and his nation as “The Great Mahlke”. But to his enemies, he remains a target. He is different and doomed in a country scarred by the war. Cat and Mouse was first published in 1961, two years after Gunter Grass’ controversial and applauded masterpiece, The Tin Drum. Once again Grass turns his attention on Danzig. With a subtle blend of humour and power, Cat and Mouse ostensibly relates the rise of Mahlke from clown to hero. But Mahlke’s outlandish antics hide the darkness at the heart of a nation torn by Nazi violence, the war, and its aftermath.

A novel set in three parts, beginning in the 1920s and ending in the 1950s, that follows the lives of two friends from the prewar years in Germany through an apocalyptic period and its startling aftermath. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

In 1999, Günter Grass was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Danzig Trilogy contains three of the author's most acclaimed works. The Tin Drum 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. Cat and Mouse The provocative story centers on the narrator's vivid recollection of a boyhood scene in which a black cat is provoked to pounce on his friend Mahlke's "mouse"—his prominent Adam's apple. This incident sets off a wild series of utterly "Grassian" events that ultimately leads to Mahlke's becoming a national hero. Because of Grass' singular storytelling virtuosity, ICat and Mouse/I is marvelously entertaining, powerful, and full of funny episodes. Dog Years In this vast novel, packed with incident, Günter Grass traces the dark labyrinth of the German mentality as it developed during the rise, fall, and aftermath of the Third Reich.