The Tin Drum

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The Tin Drum

Günter Grass

Literature

Jul 31, 2018

Narrated from an insane asylum by Oskar Matzerath, a thirty-year-old who has not grown an inch since the age of three, when—in possession of a tin drum his mother had given him and all the faculties of an adult, or so he claims—he determined not to grow beyond the three feet he then stood. Anything but innocent, this childlike figure who can, and frequently does, shatter glass with his voice, is the most unreliable of narrators, rendering the experience of Germans before, during, and after the Second World War as a kind of Brothers Grimm story in which both “once upon a time” and “happily ever after” have disappeared; what’s left is an intimate pageant of primal emotions, grotesque characters, and bizarre incidents that enchant the reader’s imagination with a kind of wicked glee. Like the most indelible fairy tale, Grass’s masterpiece leaves images rooting around in our minds that are ominous and enduring, fraught with a meaning we can neither evade nor explain.

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Olivia Diamond

Dec 6, 2018

I've read this one at least 3 times that I can remember. I love the magical realism elements and it's insight into Polish-German identities during the interwar period and following. Quite a fantastical story about the effects of the war on the European psyche.

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