Peeling the Onion

PEELING THE ONION is a searingly honest memoir that evokes Germany's most celebrated contemporary writer's modest upbringing in Danzig, his time as a boy soldier fighting the Russians and concludes with the writing of his masterpiece, The Tin Drum, in Paris. While living as an artist in Berlin with his first wife Anna, a ballet dancer, he started to concentrate on writing poetry. It was after the couple moved to Paris that the first sentence of the novel he had been determined to write and that would make his reputation came to him: 'Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital'. PEELING THE ONION is the story of a remarkable life and is, without question, one of Günter Grass' finest works.