The Living Statue

Delightfully strange… There’s a pleasingly timeless quality to this time capsule from a master.– “Publishers Weekly” Exquisite writing.–Charles Simic “The New York Review of Books” I envied him his artistic gift almost more than I admired him for his literary genius. Among the immortals.–Salman Rushdie “The New Yorker” The strongest, most inventive writer to have emerged in Germany since 1945. Much of what is active in the Germany of Krupp and the Munich beer halls lies in this man’s ribald keeping.– “Commentary”

Günter Grass (1927–2015), Germany’s most celebrated contemporary writer, attained worldwide renown with the publication of his novel The Tin Drum in 1959. A man of remarkable versatility, Grass was a poet, playwright, social critic, graphic artist, and novelist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. The award-winning translator Michael Hofmann has also translated works by Jenny Erpenbeck, Gert Hofmann, Franz Kafka, Heinrich von Kleist, and Joseph Roth for New Directions.