Leonard Forster states, "Grass identifies with his generation, the generation which was seventeen in 1945, and it is from this point of view that the Trilogy is written."' It is a constant asking and attempting to answer the questions: How did things come to be the way they are?' The theme of the Trilogy is Grass' participation in the burden of guilt inherited from the past. The Tin Drum and the two works that followed, Cat and Mouse, a novella that was published in 1961, and Dog years, a novel which came out in 1963, form the Danzig Trilogy. The movie version of the novel won the best Foreign Film award at the film festival in Cannes. His first novel The Tin Drum, 1959, was translated into every major language and won international critical acclaim. Sculptor, draftsman, playwright and poet, he lives at present in West Germany. He illuminates the state of mind of a nation in which aspirations of power and self-assertion were overtaken by the bitter anguish of defeat and the challenged conscience distracted by the dulling demands of the experiences of daily life.
He has elaborated this scene and its problems with a remarkable sense of universal implications.
His subject matter is life in Germany under the Nazis, during the years of postwar reconstruction and the present mood of recovered self-confidence. Gunter Grass, German novelist, playwright, poet, has been acclaimed as one of the two or three most gifted and provocative contemporary German authors.
She has recently completed a Doctorate in modern German literature. Inge Adams is Associate Professor of German in the Department of Foreign Languages.
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