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The Tin Drum (Vintage Classics) Paperback – 5 Feb 2004

by
Günter Grass (Author)
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Günter Grass (Author), Ralph Mannheim (Translator)
4.3 out of 5 stars 105 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 576 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage Classics; New Ed edition (5 Feb. 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 009946604X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099466048
  • Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 3.4 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 491,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"This is a big book in every sense, full of extraordinary scenes and characters: even on a single reading it seems prodigally rich in comic invention, and demands to be worried at time and again" (Julian Mitchell Sunday Times)

"Grass wrote with fury, love, derision, slapstick, pathos - all with an unforgiving conscience" (John Irving)

"Grass is one of the master fabulists of our age" (Michael Ratcliffe The Times)

"The novel is as monstrous as its hero, pullalating with a kind of anti-life... Gunter Grass may have written the nearest thing to a literary masterpiece his generation is capable of producing" (David Lodge Spectator)

"Funny, macabre, disgusting, blasphemous, pathetic, horrifying, erotic, it is an endless delirium, an outrageous phantasmagoria in which dust from Goethe, Hans Andersen, Swift, Rabelais, Joyce, Aristophanes and Rochester dances on the point of a needle in the flame of a candle that was not worth the game" (Daily Telegraph)

Book Description

On his third birthday Oskar decides to stop growing. While beating his tin drum he recounts his extraordinary life in this classic and essential German novel.

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsrepays the investment of time to read it
By William Jordan on 18 Feb. 2011
Format: Paperback Verified Purchase
This novel is about a Oskar, born with a fully developed (albeit partial, seemingly a bit autistic) grip on the world about him, who does not grow past his third birthday, drums and "singshatters" glass, and lives through pre-war Danzig, war-time Danzig and post-war Danzig in the three section of the book.

The plot is highly episodic/picaresque; the individual episdose very memorable, whether this is Oskar eating an appalling soup cooked by young children, or the death of his mother following a surfeit of seafood. On the cover of the hardback come praises from John Irving and Salman Rushdie, both of whom have learned from Grass' techniques.

The style demands concentration and patience: the new translator explains that he has tried to mirror the sentence lengths of the German original, and to make the English hard going where the original German is hard going and not to smooth out the reading experience.

It takes a long time to work through the 600 plus pages. But this is quite unique - very impressive - and if it appeals more to the head than the heart, it's very well worth persevering. I was sorry to reach the end.

Highly recommended.
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4.0 out of 5 starsRejecting the Cut & Colour of Uniforms
By Nicholas Casley TOP 500 REVIEWER on 31 July 2014
Format: Paperback
I wanted to read the book before I saw the film. I came to the book blind, knowing it had a reputation, but unaware of its content or style. For those equally ignorant of the book, the story concerns the life of Oskar, born between the wars in a world where Pole rubs side-by-side with German, and whose physical constitution means that he remains the size of a child. And as a child, he also commences a lifelong predilection for playing a tin drum.

We follow his life, his actions, thoughts, and feelings through the 1930s, through the Second World War, and into the start of the West German economic miracle. Family, neighbours, friends, and enemies and his interactions with them fill the pages. That brief description of the gist of the novel might make it sound as if it is a story of depressing times. It is not. Yes, there is tragedy, but the work is also suffused with a wry humour as Oskar comes to terms with men’s (and women’s) real intentions, as well as cultivating his own.

Grass soon establishes his approach by narrating the thoughts and actions of his character in the first-person singular, and the third person – and even the second person. And all often in the same sentence. Here’s an example that also gives a feel of the subject-matter: “… it would never occur to me to set myself up as a resistance fighter because I disrupted six or seven rallies and threw three or four parades out of step with my drumming … Did Oskar drum for the people? Did he … take the action in hand and provoke the people out in front of the rostrum to dance? Did he confound and perplex? Did he … break up brown rallies on a drum which though red and white was not Polish? Yes, I did all that. But does that make me, as I lie in this mental hospital, a Resistance Fighter?Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsa classic merits a new translation
By S. K. Lewicki on 3 Jan. 2010
Format: Hardcover
I was initially surprised to see that there was a new translation of one of my top three novels of the 20th century...why? It was done in conjunction with the author, 50 years after the book's first publication, and the introduction makes the point that great works of literature need to be re-translated for new generations of readers. Once I thought of the different translations of War & Peace I'd read, I agreed.

So I read the new translation, and I wasn't disappointed. It's more alive, more accessible, less stodgy than the old one (which is a good translation for its time). I dipped into the old one from time to time and the new one read better. The translator has taken great care with rendering aspects of Grass' German style into English so that we can get a closer feel for the original. And some small details which were originally not included (censored?) also appear, which for a purist is justification enough.

If you've never read the book, or if, like me, you're reading it for the nth time, I think this is a great new version of an astonishing novel.
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe last word
By sonik57 on 11 April 2006
Format: Audio CD
Firstly, let's clear this up:
Quoted: "Richard Barbieri's fretless bass playing"
Au contraire! Mr Barbieri was the synth-head who really did the business here, the bass work being down to the great Mick Karn.
Put simply, this is one of THE albums of the eighties. Both the musicianship, the creativity and the overall production of Tin Drum are high watermarks for anyone wanting to write an album that's as classic, imaginative, modern and accessible as anyone would wish. They'd spent what felt to be an eternity inching towards the songs here but the road had been paved by both Quiet Life (1979) and the excellent Gentlemen Take Polaroids (1980). Indeed, the years 79-81 were intensely creative for Japan and they became huge just before this, their swansong, was released.
So what are the songs like? They're great! Although not great in number, the songs are finely turned-out and Japan creatively were firing on all cylinders which is ironic considering the tensions that existed between Sylvian and Karn at the time, Karn losing his partner to his former best friend as the album was being written.
There isn't a weak track here: all three of the singles (the intensely-atmospheric 'Ghosts', the wry 'Visions Of China' and the sublime 'Cantonese Boy') are here but album tracks such as 'Talking Drum' are of an equally high standard. It's like a tailor setting out to design a handfull of brilliantly-designed, classic-yet-modern suits and excelling at the task, incorporating subtle features whilst the overall cut and style turns heads everywhere they were worn.
Someone once described Japan's latter output as 'bonzai music' as in 'small and beautiful' but it's a lot more besides. This was Japan's effective farewell, although they reunited in 1992 to record the Rain Tree Crow album. Tin Drum was really their final word and it's a masterpiece. Buy it.
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