Gunter Grass

Grass is best known for his 4-year-old novel , which tells a parallel story to the rise and fall of Hitler in an angry misshapen mental patient. Packed with energy and absurdity, The Tin Drum was Gunter Grass' first attempt to come to terms with Germany's actions in the Second World War.

Although nothing since has matched the notoriety of The Tin Drum, Grass has remained a tireless writer, whose work has matched in many ways changing perspectives and attitudes on the Cold War from a Central European perspective. is his fictionalized account of the Third Reich and its immediate aftereffects, , set in his native Danzig (now Gdansk), is the story of an older couple whose love flourishes while they sell burial plots for WWII exiles, and deals with fears of nuclear war, all weaved into a tapestry that's universal, yet unmistakably German.

The Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prizes, cited Grass' "frolicsome black fables [which] portray the forgotten face of history." The Academy also praised his knack for "reviewing contemporary history by recalling the disavowed and the forgotten: the victims, losers, and lies that people wanted to forget because they once believed in them." Grass is the first German recipient of the literature prize since 1972, when Heinrich Boll won.

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