On Writing and Politics, 1967-1983

by Günter Grass, Udi Eichler (Editor), Bill Bourne (Editor)

Overview

Dialogues which bring together a dozen leading writers and intellectuals to examine aspects of the postwar world. One of the key themes is "transition", the idea of living through an interregnum, a time of change when traditional categories no longer describe our experience, while a new language is struggling to be born. Included are dialogues from Umberto Eco, Nadine Gordimer, Salman Rushdie, Kurt Vonnegut, and others.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780851244839
Publisher:	Spokesman Books
Publication date:	12/28/1987
Series:	Voices
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

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.
 

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
For the first time the simple existence of a future is no longer secure.The traditional certainty that a writer's work might be received by posterityhas gone. But Grass does not simply acquiesce in this gloomy reality. Against it he offers the arts of peace which we find so difficult to learn. He contributes to these arts by the tone of his own writing: witty, sardonic, refusing to be overtaken by the pace of events. And if his own writing is the record of great terror, there is firmly lodged within it another history of acts ofhuman solidarity and courage which keep a vestige of hope alive. Grass does not flatter us but he doesn't lecture us either.

In the pages of this mistitled book - there is a lot on politics, very little on writing - the distinctions between parliamentary democracy and Communist dictatorship are not very sharp or important. -- New York Times

James M. Markham