Tin Drum

One of the greatest modern novels, The Tin Drum is the story of thirty-year-old Oskar Matzerath, who has lived through the long Nazi nightmare and who, as the novel begins, is being held in a mental institution. Matzerath provides a profound yet hilarious perspective on both German history and the human condition in the modern world.In this edition, Breon Mitchell, acclaimed translator and scholar, draws from a wealth of detailed scholarship to produce a translation that is more faithful to Grass's style and rhythm than the 1959 translation, restoring omissions and reflecting the complexity of the original work.After more than sixty years, The Tin Drum has, if anything, gained in power and relevance. All of Grass's amazing evocations are still there, and still amazing: Oskar Matzerath, the indomitable drummer; his grandmother, Anna Koljaiczek; his mother, Agnes; Alfred Matzerath and Jan Bronski, his presumptive fathers; Oskar's midget friends--Bebra, the great circus master and Roswitha Raguna, the famous somnambulist; Sister Scholastica and Sister Agatha, the Right Reverend Father Wiehnke; the Greffs, the Schefflers, Herr Fajngold, all Kashubians, Poles, Germans, and Jews--waiting to be discovered and re-discovered.

Günter Grass was born in Danzig, Germany, in 1927 and is the widely acclaimed author of numerous novels, plays, poems, and essays. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. Breon Mitchell is Professor of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature, and Director of the Lilly Library at Indiana University. He was awarded the Kurt and Helen Wolff Prize for his translation of Uwe Timm's Morenga in 2004.