In this extraordinary memoir, Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass remembers his early life, from his boyhood in a cramped two-room apartment in Danzig through the late 1950s, when his book The Tin Drum was published.
During the Second World War, Grass volunteered for the submarine corps at the age of 15 but was rejected; two years later, in 1944, he was instead drafted into the Waffen-SS. Taken prisoner by American forces as he was recovering from shrapnel wounds, he spent the final weeks of the war in an American POW camp. After the war, Grass resolved to become an artist and moved with his first wife to Paris, where he began to write the novel that would make him famous.
Full of the bravado of youth, the rubble of postwar Germany, the thrill of wild love affairs, and the exhilaration of Paris in the early 50s, Peeling the Onion, which caused great controversy when it was published in Germany, reveals Grass at his most intimate.
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"This is a well written, brave and honest introspection from a great writer. Gunter Grass's memory is an onion - when he ask questions of the past it is necessary to peel layers upon layers, sometimes to find that the relevant layer has nothing written on it. What is written are the early adventures of a human straw blowing in the storm winds of history - from his earliest days playing with grenade fragments in the streets of Danzig, to his experiences in the Hitler youth. In the SS during the last days of the Reich he played the role of cannon fodder for the Russians - though with a combination of incompetence and the luck of the fool he evades the fate that met most of his peers. In the postwar years he haphazardly followed his dream to succeed as an artist, though in what realm - sculpture, poetry, painting or even music - is unclear until another accident launches him as a prose writer. Throughout the whole narrative, Gunther openly acknowledges his ambiguous relationship with his parents, the many fleeting love interests of his callous and self-centred younger self, and shares with us his puzzlement at his survival and success. Bravest of all is his self-assessment as an onion - lacking a centre, lacking a heart, lacking tears until cut open and dissected, long after the layers have been set into place and covered up."
—
Ian (4 out of 5 stars)