Peeling the Onion

Resumen del libro

Peeling the Onion is a searingly honest memoir that evokes Grass' modest upbringing in Danzig, his time as a boy soldier fighting the Russians and concludes with the writing of his masterpiece, The Tin Drum, in Paris.

Grass' parents ran a corner shop, but his mother, whom he adored, encouraged him towards books and music. Like most of his peers, he joined the Hitler Youth and in 1944, when he was just 17, he was sent to the Eastern front with the Waffen SS and found himself facing Russian tanks and machine guns. Recovering from shrapnel wounds in a military hospital, he had the good fortune to be taken prisoner by the Americans.

In the aftermath of the war, following a stint as a miner, Grass survived by trading on the black market and resolved to become an artist, eventually enrolling at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf. While living as an artist in Berlin with his first wife Anna, a ballet dancer, he started to concentrate on writing poetry. It was after the couple moved to Paris that the first sentence of the novel he had been determined to write and that would make his reputation came to him: Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital'.

Biografía del autor

Günter Grass wurde am 16. Oktober 1927 in Danzig geboren, absolvierte nach der Entlassung aus amerikanischer Kriegsgefangenschaft eine Steinmetzlehre, studierte dann Grafik und Bildhauerei in Düsseldorf und Berlin. 1956 erschien der erste Gedichtband mit Zeichnungen, 1959 der erste Roman 'Die Blechtrommel'. 1965 erhielt der Autor den Georg-Büchner-Preis, 1994 den Karel-Capek-Preis. 1999 wurde ihm der Nobelpreis für Literatur verliehen und 2009 wurde er zum Ehrenpräsidenten des P.E.N. ernannt. Grass lebt in der Nähe von Lübeck.