Which Nobel Prize in Literature laureate wrote the novel The Tin Drum?

Günter Grass wrote The Tin Drum, the novel that established his international literary reputation.

Published in German in 1959 as Die Blechtrommel, the book follows Oskar Matzerath, a boy in Danzig who decides to stop growing physically at age three. Its surreal storytelling blends satire, historical memory, and fantasy while examining Germany’s experience of Nazism and the Second World War.

Grass received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. The Swedish Academy praised his fables of “black” humor for portraying the forgotten face of history. Readers sometimes confuse Grass with Thomas Mann or Heinrich Böll, other major German-language Nobel laureates, but neither wrote The Tin Drum.

The novel is the first volume of Grass’s Danzig Trilogy, followed by Cat and Mouse and Dog Years. Grass was also a poet, playwright, graphic artist, and political commentator.