Grass

September 30, 1999
Web posted at: 9:31 a.m. EDT (1331 GMT)

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (CNN) -- Günter Grass, a social critic considered Germany's greatest living writer, won the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Swedish Academy said Thursday.

The Swedish Academy cited Grass' first novel, "The Tin Drum," published in 1959.

"Here he comes to grips with the enormous task of reviewing contemporary history by recalling the disavowed and the forgotten: the victims, losers and lies that people wanted to forget because they had once believed in them.

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"It is not too audacious to assume that "The Tin Drum" will become one of the enduring literary works of the 20th century," according to a statement by the Academy.

Grass reacted with joy to news of the announcement.

"I'm happy," Grass, flanked by his wife and dog, said outside his house in Behlendorf, 30 kilometers (20 miles) south of the northern German city of Lüebeck.

Grass, born in 1927, is the fifth European winner in a row, and Germany's seventh Nobel literature laureate.

He is a heralded social critic, admired by his literary contemporaries but also controversial because of his political views. He argued against the speedy German reunification in 1990. In 1997, he called the then conservative German government's refugee and asylum policies as "democratically covered barbarism."

"When Günter Grass published "The Tin Drum" in 1959 it was as if German literature had been granted a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction," the academy said.

In "The Tin Drum," later made into an Oscar-winning film by German director Volker Schloendorff, Grass draws on his childhood before and during World War II in Danzig, then a German city and now a Polish port.

The massive canvas of the novel, movingly painting the victims and losers of society, breaks the bounds of realism by having as its protagonist and narrator an infernal intelligence in the body of a three-year-old boy who never grows, but who overpowers his fellow human beings with the help of a toy drum.

The Swedish Academy noted the award is for his body of work, including his most recent novel, "My Century," which came out this year.

Academy secretary Horace Engdahl, who made the announcement, said the academy didn't take into account Grass' controversial views. "The book is damn good," he said of "My Century."

Grass is considered one of the most significant and controversial authors to emerge in Germany after World War II, establishing his reputation with "The Tin Drum," "Cat and Mouse" and "Dog Years."

The three works, collectively known as The Danzig Trilogy, capture the German reaction to the rise of Nazism, the horrors of war, and the guilt that has lingered in the aftermath of Adolf Hitler's regime.

Grass is the first German to win the prize -- the most prestigious award for writers and worth nearly $1 million -- since Heinrich Böll in 1972.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, on a visit to Prague, was delighted with the news, and Culture Minister Michael Naumann, himself a publisher, also expressed satisfaction.

"That's fabulous. It is an honour for Grass and for German literature," Naumann said, praising Grass's efforts to bridge the gap between east and west during the Cold War.

Whatever controversy he has courted at home, he is seen as an admired predecessor for many other great writers around the world, such as Colombia's Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Britain's Salmon Rushdie.

The academy, founded in 1786, has 18 members, though one chair is vacant and three members don't participate. Academy members, former recipients and a select group of literature and language professors and specialists in the field may suggest candidates.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.