Günter Grass Books in Order: Complete Bibliography & Best Starting Points
Günter Grass's complete bibliography in order — from The Tin Drum and Cat and Mouse to Dog Years. Best starting points for new readers of the Nobel laureate.
Günter Grass (1927–2015) is the most important German novelist of the postwar period — his Danzig Trilogy (The Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse, Dog Years) is the most complete literary account of German experience in the Second World War, and The Tin Drum specifically is one of the most technically inventive and morally serious novels of the twentieth century. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999.
He grew up in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), was drafted into the Waffen-SS at seventeen, and spent years after the war as Germany’s most prominent moral commentator — a position complicated in 2006 when he revealed his SS membership.
The Danzig Trilogy
The Tin Drum (1959)
The essential starting point — Oskar Matzerath’s extraordinary narration from his psychiatric ward, covering Danzig from the 1920s through the postwar period. Grass’s use of the grotesque (Oskar’s refusal to grow, his glass-shattering scream, his drum) transforms a realistic account of Nazi Germany into something both more disturbing and more true. One of the great novels of the twentieth century.
Cat and Mouse (1961)
The most accessible of the Danzig works — a novella about Mahlke’s obsessive heroism and Pilenz’s complicity, set in wartime Danzig. At 150 pages, the most concentrated and precise of Grass’s books and the best starting point for readers who find The Tin Drum daunting.
Dog Years (1963)
The third panel of the trilogy — three narrators covering the Nazi period through the economic miracle, centering on a black shepherd dog that passes from a working-class German family to a Nazi official to Hitler himself (as a gift). The most complex and formally innovative of the three books; requires the most patience.
Later Works
The Flounder (1977)
Grass’s post-trilogy novel — a magic flounder (from the Grimm tale) who has been advising men throughout history is put on trial by a feminist tribunal. The novel covers ten thousand years of food, women, and history; formally extravagant and less disciplined than the Danzig Trilogy.
Complete Bibliography (Major Works)
| Title | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|
| The Tin Drum | 1959 | Danzig Trilogy I; Nobel level |
| Cat and Mouse | 1961 | Danzig Trilogy II; novella |
| Dog Years | 1963 | Danzig Trilogy III; three narrators |
| Local Anaesthetic | 1969 | West German political novel |
| The Flounder | 1977 | Feminist satire; food; history |
| The Meeting at Telgte | 1979 | Seventeenth-century writers |
| The Rat | 1986 | Ecological fable |
| My Century | 1999 | One story per year, 1900–1999 |
| Peeling the Onion | 2006 | Memoir; SS revelation |
Reading Order Recommendations
New to Grass: Cat and Mouse → The Tin Drum → Dog Years.
Danzig Trilogy in order: The Tin Drum → Cat and Mouse → Dog Years.
Complete: The Tin Drum → Cat and Mouse → Dog Years → The Flounder.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best Günter Grass book to start with?
The Tin Drum (1959) is the essential starting point — narrated by Oskar Matzerath from a psychiatric ward, a man who at the age of three decided to stop growing and has a drum whose sound can shatter glass. Oskar's account of Danzig under the Nazis and Soviet forces is one of the most disturbing and inventive accounts of the Second World War in fiction. It is demanding (at over 600 pages), but it is also funny and formally extraordinary. Cat and Mouse (1961) is the shorter, more accessible entry point — a novella about a schoolboy in wartime Danzig whose prominent Adam's apple becomes the novel's central symbol.
What is The Tin Drum about?
The Tin Drum (1959) is narrated by Oskar Matzerath, who at the age of three decides to stop growing and thereafter maintains the body and the drum of a three-year-old while his mind develops into adulthood. From his psychiatric ward, Oskar narrates the story of his family in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) from the 1920s through the Second World War and into the postwar period — the rise of the Nazis, the siege of Danzig, the rape by Soviet soldiers, the postwar German economic miracle. Grass uses Oskar's unreliable narration and his magical properties (his drum-beating can make people reveal their truths; his screaming can shatter glass) to produce a surreal, satirical account of the century that is also deeply personal. Won Grass the Nobel Prize in Literature.
What is Cat and Mouse about?
Cat and Mouse (1961) is the second part of the Danzig Trilogy — a novella narrated by Pilenz, who tells the story of Joachim Mahlke, a boy with a large Adam's apple (the cat of the title, to Pilenz's mouse) at their school in wartime Danzig. Mahlke is an obsessive overachiever — he becomes the school's best swimmer, wins military decorations — and Pilenz's account of his friend is both an act of admiration and an attempt at understanding his own complicity in Mahlke's fate. The most concentrated and most psychologically precise of the Danzig Trilogy.
What is the Danzig Trilogy?
The Danzig Trilogy consists of The Tin Drum (1959), Cat and Mouse (1961), and Dog Years (1963) — three works set in and around Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) covering the Nazi period and its aftermath. Together they constitute the most complete literary account of German experience in the Second World War, written from the perspective of someone who grew up in Danzig (as Grass did) and was drafted into the Waffen-SS as a teenager. In 2006, Grass revealed in his memoir Peeling the Onion that he had been a member of the Waffen-SS — a revelation that complicated the moral authority he had claimed as Germany's literary conscience.
