The Tin Drum

A fantastic work of a surefooted wordsmith takes an equally talented translator to carry it across the linguistic barrier in a way that makes it a literary treat in its own right.

I’m envious of Breon Mitchell’s limpid linguistic manoeuvering that has rendered the German modern classic very enjoyable in English. The narration set in Nazi times as told by a dwarf – who is rather unlikeable by all counts – is an ingenious technique of stripping bad politics to its bare bones and laying out the nonsense that remains.

It is political without being political. There are signs galore… show more.

The story of an unusual boy who stops growing for fear of becoming an adult in Nazi Germany. The novel was made into a much-heralded film, too, though the book explores the zeitgeist to greater effect. Gunter Grass is a master of irony and wit, and his boy creation becomes the story’s conscience as Germany descends into a moral hell. Ironically, Gunter Grass was outed later in his life as a former S.S. recruit.