Born in 1927 in Gdansk, Poland, Gunter Grass was a member of the Hitler Youth in the 1930s. At the age of 16, he was drafted into the German military, was wounded, and became a prisoner of war in 1945. His first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), selected by the French as the best foreign language book of 1962, is the story of Oscar Matzerath, a boy who refuses to grow up as a protest to the cruelty of German society during the war. It is the first part of his Danzig trilogy, followed by Cat and Mouse (1961) and Dog Years (1963), and was made into a movie by director Volker Schlondorff, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1979. Grass has been honored many times, including a distinguished service medal from the Federal Republic of Germany in 1980 which he refused to accept. His book Local Anaesthetic was chosen as one of the ten best books of 1970 by Time magazine. Another book, The Flounder, was also chosen by Time as one of the best fiction works of 1978.
