ABOUT THE BOOK

By Germany's most eminent contemporary writer, a collection of interlinked stories celebrating the century, to be published simultaneously around the world. Gunter Grass tells us a story for every year of our century. He writes of great events and seemingly trivial events, of technical developments and scientific discoveries, of achievements in culture and sports, of megalomania, of persecution and murder, of war and disasters, and of new beginnings.

Although each story has a different narrator, collectively the stories form a complete and linear narrative in which the individual is the focus. As the sequence unfolds, a lively and rich picture emerges, an historical portrait of the millennium in all its grandeur and in all its horror. One hundred stories coming full circle to create a novel of our century.

Gunter Grass, born in Danzig in 1927, is Germany's most celebrated contemporary writer. He is a man of remarkable versatility: novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, graphic artist. His most recent book in English is 'The Selected Poems of Gunter Grass', also published by Faber and Faber.

 

Here are some readers' comments on My Century:

"The work is a compilation of short stories, one for each year of the 20th century. Grass has given each one a different narrator. While some of the events described seem of little consequence in the overall scheme of things, they nevertheless act as a link in the chain of events which constitute a millennium.

The reader should commence at page one and continue reading to the end, but there is a tendency to dip in and extract the years which are of personal interest, thereby losing the connecting thread which goes to make up the complete picture.

I find Grass's idea for the novel interesting, but the contents fairly forgettable."

(A member of Raheny Library Reading Group.)