| Lancette Arts Journal Founded in 2000 |
Book Reviews From our Archives |
April 2004 |
By Alidë Kohlhaas
Whenever I read one of Günter Grass' books, I come away with an odd feeling of not knowing whether the author is playing with his readers or whether he is dead-serious. He is an undeniable fabulist, a satirist in the German sense that is very unlike that of the Anglo-Saxon satirist, but he also deals enough with real events to introduce a kind of cockeyed reality that can be said to represent the nature of the German mind and social attitudes. His left-wing politics, although he does not state them overtly in his books, have also shaped the way he sees the world and the way he describes it. One thing, regardless of the theme, he has never been one who has taken on the stance of the whiner, the claim of being the victimized. That is, until now.
In his latest book, Crabwalk (published in Germany in 2002 as Im Krebsgang), Grass has been caught in the trap set by two historians, one now deceased, the other very much alive. The late W.G. Sebald, in a lecture series at the University of Zurich, and in a subsequent publication of that series with additional material, accused German writers of ignoring the bombing of Germany in WWII. By doing so, he claimed, they ignored the consequent suffering of the German people at the hands of the Allies. Historian Jörg Friedrich published a book, Der Brand: Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945 (which translates as The Fire: Germany during the Bombardment 1940-1945), shortly after Grass' Crabwalk appeared. He details even further the effect bombing had on cities and individuals in Germany than his colleague, Sebald, had done.
What is so horrifying about both books and authors is not that they showed what effect bombing had, but that they did so without putting the bombings into a historic or political context. I will be reviewing Der Brand later, so I do not . . .
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To get further insight into past and current events in Germany, click here to read about Stasiland by Australian writer, Anna Funder
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