[Gcromqgb]

Grass, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature, has been battling with the legacy of the German past (and, as recently revealed his own guilt) since the publication of his first novel "The Tin Drum" almost 50 years ago. His novel, Crabwalk, published 2003, continues in this vein, but uses a different angle. This time, Grass analyses the German past with the emphasis firmly rooted on the sufferings of the ordinary German citizen fleeing from the advances of the Red Army.

The focal point of the novel is the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a former cruise ship turned refugee carrier, by a Soviet submarine in January 1945. Some 9000 people, mostly women and children, lost their lives.

The narrator of the story is a survivor of the tragedy - a man born during the actual sinking, a man who desperately wishes that he could live life beyond the shadow of the sinking but who is not allowed to forget, because his mother and, perversely his son, are both obsessed with it.

The story is told in a very indirect manner. While researching on the internet, the narrator, a journalistic hack, comes across a site blutzeuge.de (blutzeuge = martyr), a site commemorating the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. The group behind it are obviously contemporary right-wing Germans, using the ship and its victims for their own propaganda. This sets off his memories and gradually the whole history of the ship, its sinking and the blight the past continues to exert on both the individual and the collective present unfolds. In places this is a harrowing read. Yet the emotional pitch of the novel never becomes hysterical. It is very low key and detached. Grass achieves this through a variety of means: the emotional detachment of a narrator who wishes to distance himself from his past; the even handedness of the story which includes a stream with a detailed history of the Russian submarine and its captain; the narrative style, much of it written in the passive voice and, of course, the crabwalk of the title - a story, shuffling sideways and backwards, while slowly moving forwards. As if German history isn't enough, this novel of only 234 pages tackles other major issues: the accountability of parents for their children's behaviour; fate; whether humans can learn from the past.

The translation by Krishna Winston has attracted a fair amount of criticism. I can't comment because I haven't got the German text to hand. Some of the longer sentences strike me as being typical German constructs. These might read better in English if broken down into smaller sentences. Yet, that, in itself, would change the pace of the novel, making it appear more dynamic and less of a crabwalk.

This is not a comfortable read but it is one that provokes much thought as it brings the legacy of the German past right into the 21st century.

[Pataacculako]

A fabulous book, and your review helps me actually remember why I liked it so much, Lizzy. Thanks.

[Pataacculako]

The translation by Krishna Winston has attracted a fair amount of criticism. I can't comment because I haven't got the German text to hand. Some of the longer sentences strike me as being typical German constructs. These might read better in English if broken down into smaller sentences. Yet, that, in itself, would change the pace of the novel, making it appear more dynamic and less of a crabwalk.

I think this was one of the first translated works I read and it is the book which made me realise I wanted to read more books in translation. I thought the prose had a richness which would not have existed had it been written in English in the first place.

[purchasviagra]

A nice little read, Crabwalk. Of the four Grass novels I've read, this was the most traditional and straightforward. But I found the purpose of the novel misguided. I understand Grass has taken upon himself to be the consciousness of post-war Germany and doesn't want his country to ever forget, but can he not at least have some compassion for his countrymen when they were the victims?

The Gustloff was a tragedy that claimed over 9000 victims, including many civilians, but Grass only seems bothered about how the neo-Nazis have used it as a propaganda symbol. Not even the main character, who was born during the sinking, has any feelings for it except spite.

[verizon]

A nice little read, Crabwalk. Of the four Grass novels I've read, this was the most traditional and straightforward. But I found the purpose of the novel misguided. I understand Grass has taken upon himself to be the consciousness of post-war Germany and doesn't want his country to ever forget, but can he not at least have some compassion for his countrymen when they were the victims?

The Gustloff was a tragedy that claimed over 9000 victims, including many civilians, but Grass only seems bothered about how the neo-Nazis have used it as a propaganda symbol. Not even the main character, who was born during the sinking, has any feelings for it except spite.

That's not how I read it at all.

I think it's quite clear that Grass feels for the victims of the Gustloff sinking ? and, indeed, about the German victims of the war in general (Dresden etc). It was impossible, for me, to read the scene, for instance, where the children are drowning, having fallen into the freezing water upside down, without being shaken and appalled. That's not a response to a book where you're not supposed to feel sympathy.

Grass treats the subject very deftly ? by treating it very unemotionally. But the very point of the book is that the rammifications of what happened to Germans are still being felt today ? and that that needs to be faced, not just from a perspective of perpetrators, but as victims too.

It took this book ? which you see as unsympathetic ? to actually bring out into the open in Germany the entire question of German victims of WWII, including those specifically of the Gustloff sinking (which had sunk as an issue, apart from a film in the 1950s). It's arguable that few, if any, other writers could have done that. One of the only others who has been able to examine the issue at all, without being accused of anti-semitism or excusing Nazism, is WG Sebald, in his On the History of Natural Destruction.

[poulaMahmah]

Crabwalk is a horrible book, let's not mince words about this. I admit I probably wouldn't feel like this, if we weren't talking about G?nter fucking Grass who might just be the best German writer of his age still alive. Or the best German writer still alive? Whatever.

After what I (and not many people do) consider one of his best novels, Far Afield, Grass has embarked on a number of failed literary ventures. Once an amazing poet (fuckin great), he published two (three?) volumes of horribly bad poetry, the worst of which was Letzte T?nze which was just...*shudders*.

To accompagny this he first wrote Mein Jahrhundert, which proved again, if we still needed proof, after ?rtlich bet?ubt and similar mishaps, that short novels and stories are not his forte. But it wasn't bad, it was just very very slight and monumentally boring. Then...Crabwalk. Just like Rushdie's Fury, Crabwalk showed a writer who was imprisoned in his own style. The novel reads as if it had been written by a bad imitator of Grass, I needed to have several starts on the novel to even finish the paltry 200 pages. Grass had deteriorated to a few ticks (old, worn, and known for decades), lukewarm references to his own work and half hearted historical lectures, all of this peppered with Internet newspeak that were as much of a nuisance in his idiosyncratic style as sand in a salad.

It was, after that harrowing experience, with trepidation that I picked up his last book. I was very relieved.

[purchasviagra]

How can a German writer fail at short novels? The novella is the German format par excellence.

I love Cat and Mouse, which was my first venture into G?nter Grass: it had a clear style, it abounded in vivid images, and had believable child characters. I felt I had discovered a great writer.

The Call of the Toad and The Tin Drum have irrepairably shaken my trust in him. And even though I enjoyed Crabwalk, I never saw again the qualities that made me love that first book so much.

His My Century fills me with loathing, but not for the writing; I find it disturbing that an intellectual would not know the 20th century started in 1901. This was one of the first things I learned in primary school, along with writing my name and adding two and two.

I still have a huge curiosity for his work, but I plan to proceed carefully and slowly.