Katz und Maus

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Heinemann Educational, 1971 - Fiction - 240 pages
Aus der Rückschau des Jahres 1959 erzählt Pilenz vom bewunderten und verachteten Klassenkameraden Mahlke im Danzig der Kriegszeit, den sein übergroßer Adamsapfel zum Außenseiter macht. Mahlke führt einen verzweifelten Kampf um seine Integration, um die Schließung des existentiellen Risses zwischen "Katz" und "Maus", und wird doch im Sieg endgültig scheitern. Auch das Ritterkreuz, von dem er sich Perversion der Zeit gemäß Erlösung durch Bedeckung seiner Blöße erhofft, verhilft ihm nicht zum Frieden mit der Welt. "Die große Danzig-Saga, als deren zweites, aber gewiß nicht letztes Stück Katz und Maus sich darstellt, ist eine Suche nach dem verlorenen Raum. Unerreichbar und unerschöpflich, doch deutlich wie Vineta in der Flut, liegt Danzig auf dem Grund dieser Prosa da." Hans Magnus Enzensberger

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Contents

KATZ UND MAUS
33
Notes
181
Bibliography
205
Copyright

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About the author (1971)

Günter Wilhelm Grass was born on October 16, 1927 in the Free City of Danzig, which is now Gdansk, Poland. He was a member of the Hitler Youth and at the age of 17, he was drafted into the German army. Near the end of the war, he served as a tank gunner in the 10th SS Panzer Division. He was captured by the Americans and forced to visit the newly liberated Dachau concentration camp. After his release from a POW camp in 1946, he worked in a potash mine and as a stonemason's apprentice and studied painting and sculpture in Düsseldorf. His first novel, The Tin Drum, was published in 1959. It was adapted into a film and won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1979. His other works included Cat and Mouse, Dog Years, From the Diary of a Snail, The Flounder, The Rat, and Crabwalk. He also wrote a memoir entitled Peeling the Onion. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. He was also a political activist and liberal provocateur. He advocated for environmental conservation, debt relief for poor countries, and generous policies regarding political asylum. He died on April 13, 2015 at the age of 87.

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