Headbirths: or The Germans are Dying Out

by Günter Grass, Ralph Manheim (Translator)

Harm and Dörte Peters, the quintessential couple, are on vacation in Asia. But wherever they are, they can't get away from the political upheaval back home. With irony and wit, Grass takes aim at capitalism, communism, religion-even reproduction; nothing escapes unscathed. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Genres: Fiction, German Literature, Germany, Philosophy, Novels, Literature, Collections

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Novels, notably The Tin Drum (1959) and Dog Years (1963), of German writer Günter Wilhelm Grass, who won the Nobel Prize of 1999 for literature, concern the political and social climate of Germany during and after World War II.

This novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, and sculptor since 1945 lived in West Germany but in his fiction frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood. He always identified as a Kashubian.

He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. He named this style “broadened reality.” “Cat and Mouse” (1961) and Dog Years (1963) also succeeded in the period. These three novels make up his “Danzig trilogy.”

Helene Grass (née Knoff, 1898 - 1954), a Roman Catholic of Kashubian-Polish origin, bore Günter Grass to Willy Grass (1899 - 1979), a Protestant ethnic German. Parents reared Grass as a Catholic. The family lived in an apartment, attached to its grocery store in Danzig-Langfuhr (now Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz). He has one sister, born in 1930.

Grass attended the Danzig gymnasium Conradinum. He volunteered for submarine service with the Kriegsmarine "to get out of the confinement he felt as a teenager in his parents' house" which he considered - in a very negative way - civic Catholic lower middle class. In 1943 he became a Luftwaffenhelfer, then he was drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and in November 1944, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, into the Waffen-Schutzstaffel. The seventeen-year-old Grass saw combat with the 10th Schutzstaffel panzer division Frundsberg from February 1945 until he was wounded on 20 April 1945 and sent to an American prisoner of war camp.

In 1946 and 1947, he worked in a mine and received an education of a stonemason. For many years, he studied sculpture and graphics, first at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He also worked as an author and traveled frequently. He married in 1954 and from 1960 lived in Berlin as well as part-time in Schleswig-Holstein. Divorced in 1978, he remarried in 1979. From 1983 to 1986 he held the presidency of the Berlin Akademie der Künste (Berlin Academy of Arts).

During the German unification process in 1989 he argued for separation of the two states, because he thought a unified Germany would resume its past aggression. He moved to the northern German city of Lübeck in 1995. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. In 2006, Grass caused controversy with his disclosure of his Waffen-Schutzstaffel service during the final months of World War II, which he had kept a secret until publishing his memoir that year. He died of complications of lung infection on 13th of April, 2015 at a Lübeck hospital. He was 87.

Reviews

[Jennifer Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely enjoyed reading and indulging in Grass's various musings. I had a hard time relating to it considering the specificity of some of the content to 1979 Germany, but I gained perspective on what the German mindset was when faced with the onset of the ever looming 1980's, regarding culture, progress, national and global politics, birth rates, literature, and much more. As always with Grass, he is dissatisfied with working in only the past, the present, or the future for his stories, so he artfully weaves between all three (what he calls the paspresuture, or something...). He can never simply tell a tale - instead, here he serves as the narrator to explain how he is using his own recent experiences to develop a story (the primary plot, maybe?) about two fictional German teachers on a trip to India, which he "plans" to make into a movie - hence he humorously describes how he would envision the actors and shots, considers the limitations of filming site locations and the expense of hiring of extras, etc. It is great, though sometimes exhausting, to feel like you are inside of his head observing how an author makes all of the seemingly minuscule decisions to shape plot elements, characters, metaphors, etc... buuuttttt unfortunately I didn't find any of these particular plot elements, characters OR metaphors very interesting! Oh well!

[Lindsay Holmes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not a book that will be a popular favorite, but I really liked the style. It's so honest and forthright, it doesn't feel like he's sitting down to write a book, but likes he's scribbling notes to himself.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun little book (136 pages!) that you can easily read in a day. Not your typical Günter Grass book (is there such a thing as a typical Günter Grass book?).

My review would be an amalgamation of Lindsay Holmes' and Jennifer Richardson's reviews (on this site) , with probably a personal touch added here and there, but essentially either paraphrasing them, or repeating word for word what they said - I mean, wrote. Anyway.

I found myself just 'going along' with Günter and his thoughts, and reflected on how a lot of the things he touches on are still relevant today, like Western countries' declining birth rates (with their sociological impacts) and environmental concerns. And the book has some aspects of a travelogue, so you get by the way some information on a few Asian countries - that was a plus.

Sure, the 1980 election in West Germany is long over (so is West Germany, for that matter), so that dates the book a bit (a bit, ha!), but overall I really enjoyed this book and I know for a fact I'll read it again (and again). Some funny bits in there as well. Thanks, Günter.

[Susanna Rautio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Aivoituksia (suomenkielistä painosta ei löytynyt GR:stä) on kirja, jota ei olisi kannattanut julkaista - ainakaan kirjana.

Kirjan nimi on saksaksi Saksalaiset kuolevat sukupuuttoon. Paljon parempi nimi! Kirja kertoo väestönkasvusta. Siihen on otettu ihmisenkokoinen perspektiivi: Harm ja Dörte, jotka miettivät lisääntyäkö vai ei. Ja ovat siitä koko ajan eri mieltä. Ja matkustavat sitä miettimään Aasiaan.

Kirja on kirjoitettu 1980-luvulla ja siinä on paljon ajankohtaispolitiikkaa. Siis 1980-luvulta. Ja siinä puhutaan liittokanslerin vaaleista, sosialidemokratiasta, Saksojen yhdistymisestä, Grassin omasta Aasian matkasta ja tehdään tästä kaikesta elokuvakäsikirjoitusta.

Kaikki tämä ohkaisessa kirjassa, jonka luki - onneksi - parissa tunnissa.

Kaikkein nolointa kirjassa on Aasian matkalla seikkaileva maksamakkara. Ei tarvita Freudia selittämään, mikä sen symbolinen merkitys on lisääntymistä käsittelevässä kirjassa.

Muistan siis Aivoituksia loppuelämäni maksamakkarakirjana.

Suosittelen Aivoituksia vain niille, jotka haluavat lukea Günter Grassin koko tuotannon. Se on sinällään ihan hyvä syy.

[Naele]

یک مقاله که به روند افزایش و پیری جمعیت در آلمان و چین و هند می پردازه. نویسنده با بکارگیری ژانرهایی در قالب زوجی معلم در جامعه که تمایل به تولید مثل ندارند و به کشمکش های ذهنی زندگی مشترک در رابطه با این موضوع مشغولند، در حال تحلیل جامعه آماری آلمان است.

[Staky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Neki delovi su bili ok, ostatak, priznajem, tema nije za mene.

[Kelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could give half stars, but based on readability, story, and prose, I’d give it a 3/5. However, the half star would go to synchronicity.

I bought this book 3+ years ago at a used book store in Toronto. I live in Brooklyn now and have looked at the book several times since its purchase and my move, but because I hate both the title and the cover, it never quite made it to the top of my “to read” pile. (I thought the word headbirths and the drawing of the fetus was a bit much, but I guess it isn’t now that I know how much about babies this book turned out to be.) However, I needed a short book to read before my trip, so this was the best candidate. Boy was I surprised! I picked up this book 2 weeks before my own trip to India. I also picked it up a day after having watched the One Child Nation documentary on Amazon Prime about China’s One Child Policy.

This book was fun to read for several reasons:
1) It was fun because I read it now, in the first weeks of 2020, way on the other side of the 80s. I was born in 1988 but because I lived in Germany for 3 years I know who won the election Grass’s characters fret over, and I know that something much worse can happen — Trump is President. I was barely alive when the wall fell, but fall it did, and I have lived in Berlin post reunification. I know, for example, that Grass’s argument that the East and West Germany were still of one culture, one country divided, is either false or it changed between 1979 and 1989. Östalgie is real, and I witnessed its bittersweet impact on East Berliners. The Turkish “Gäste” stayed in Germany and have established their own German subculture — I saw that too. The world’s population is over 7 billion now, and I know what countries like China have done since around this book was written to control the population (China introduced its One Child Policy in 1978). I know also how that backfired after having worked with Chinese in Toronto who were all products of the One Child Policy and all lamented, at the most superficial level, not being allowed to have siblings. I can only imagine how their sterilized mothers felt. It was fun to read the worries of a Westerner living in a world that seemed to be too quickly changing. And I guess it was then, comparatively. “Quick, find Kabul in an atlas.” Piece of cake today... the war on terror put Afghanistan on the map for everyone. The real struggle today is finding an atlas.
2) This book was fun to read because it was my first Günther Grass, and I loved the way he played with time and place. I love a self-aware piece of art.
3) It was also fun to read a piece that so plainly expressed someone’s opinions in a work of fiction. I know what Grass fears of the world, I know the then-felt opinion of slum-tourism, I know the then-felt opinion of birth control and family planning.

Why I might not read this book again:
1) The translation wasn’t horrible, but let’s just say I could tell that it was a translation and that it was a translation from the German. Sorry Ralph Manheim, but if I read another Grass it will be by a different translator.
2) It’s painfully out of date. It was fun to read for this reason the same way it’s fun to look at an old photo album or yearbook. But I don’t know if it’s worth doing it again.
3) This may just be Grass’s style of prose, but I don’t know if I can handle living in the neuroses of multiple characters again. I felt Harm, Dörte, AND the narrator’s worries, and it’s a bit much.


*Favorite character: the liver sausage

[Kris McCracken · Rating 2 out of 5]

The odd little experiment that is Headbirths, or, the Germans Are Dying Out. Written at the end of the 1970s, this book reflects an awaking to cinematic form for the author (Volker Schlöndorff’s adaption of The Tin Drum had just won the Palme d'Or and Best Foreign Language film Oscar). As such, it is a confusing mash up of screen treatment and novel.

A weird little polemic that is part-political manifesto, part-cultural study, part-pseudo-philosophical treatise, part-travel diary, part-smarmy exploration of birth/ death/ identity/ capitalism/ communism/ religion etc etc etc. As such, it can a frustrating bugger when you’re really not in the mood and would like a little more meat and potatoes and a little less smoke and mirrors.

I wouldn’t bother...

[Victoria]

Gunter Grass was a favorite writer of mine for a long time, though recently I've read little he wrote. Headbirths is fun to read but doesn't quite combine its various genres -- novel, essay, plan for a film script -- in a coherent way. Set at the end of 1979, the massive changes in German history since that date might make Grass's essay interesting for some, obsolete for others. The combination of genres made it fun to read, if eventually disappointing.

[Paul Gaya Ochieng Simeon Juma · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book for those interested in Germany or rather Germanys. I say Germanys because the Germany that I know is one which is allied to the West. But the one portrayed in this book seems to adopt and practice Eastern ideologies. The latter is partly concerned with merging the individual with the whole. We see a Germany that is run by conservatives as opposed to liberals.

[Raffi · Rating 4 out of 5]

short, yet dense. found at the flea market in echo park. definitely will reread. nationality, history, absurdity, activism, death; travel, fiction, inversions of reality. i liked it a lot, will definitely be reading more grass.

[Dight · Rating 4 out of 5]

Considering its time of writing it is a prescient discussion of a very modern situation which has not yet been fully grasped.

[Glass River]

Take a bleak statistic. China has a population of 1.3 billion (996 million in 1980, when Grass’ novel was written), a figure that is rapidly increasing. Germany has a shrinking population of 81 million. Where can a novel go with that fact? Into head-dizzying complexities and a new kind of fiction if Günter Grass is the novelist. He always believed German fiction had to start again, after 1945, from a zero baseline. All the literary foundations had been rotted by Hitler. ‘The past must be overcome’, said Grass. But without the past, where does a writer start? In Headbirths, one’s first reaction is that Grass isn’t writing what one would regard as a novel at all. That privilege, we apprehend, no longer exists for novelists of his culturally shattered background. What he offers is a journal of 1979–80, with some fanciful digressions.
Floating in this narrative primal soup is an extraordinarily frank personal essay (although not quite frank enough to reveal that he served in the Waffen SS, a fact that only emerged in 2006). ‘By a dubious stroke of luck’, the novelist was born in 1927. But the current purge of an older, unluckier generation of German writers, condemned to silence by their Nazi pasts, leads him to speculate on his own career had little Günter been born ten years earlier, in 1917. In an eerie bio-bibliography of this tainted self, he provides an oeuvre which runs from the late Expressionist, rhapsodic poetry of his Hitler Youth period, through the post-Stalingrad ‘poetry of lasting significance’, to the ‘fresh start’ mode of de-Nazified 1947. All of which pertains to Grass’s main literary-historical datum: that the ideology of National Socialism has laid waste the German language as extensively and less reparably than bombing laid waste the country’s cities. If the German writer wants a tradition, he has to make it up out of his head. As regards what’s bothering Grass’s head most in this novel, it’s the politics of carnal/cerebral fertility – ‘Creativity’. During the war, the German people had been instructed to breed for the Reich. ‘Fuck for the Führer’ was not how they put it, but what was meant. So not to breed is, for the post-war German, an act of freedom. But what does that mean for Germany? The ultimate freedom is the freedom to think. But the Germans are thinking themselves to extinction. Falling birthrates confirm that Germany is now Raum ohne Volk, as dependent on fast-breeding immigrants to keep up the population figures as it is dependent on fast-breeding reactors for its ‘power’.
The overarching – and non-fictional – event in the novel/non-novel is a tour by Grass and Volker Schlöndorff (director of the film of Grass’ The Tin Drum) of various Third World locations. Seethingly populous India, Java or China are preferred settings for the new film they have vaguely in mind. The film never happens. But the scenario survives in another strand of the novel.
The main line of narrative centres on a model German teacher couple, Harm and Dörte Peters, from Itzehoe, Holstein. They worry their heads perpetually about whether or not they should have a baby. The poor thing might, for instance, have to grow up in a nuclear-powered Germany. The Peterses are children of the late 1960s: ‘they met in Kiel, at a sit-in against the Vietnam War, or the Springer Press or both.’ Now they are lost souls. Rudi Dutschke, their student rebel hero, is dead (drowned in a bath, after being shot in the head – a head death). Dörte has grown up to become a member of the FDP (Free Democratic Party) while Harm belongs to the SPD (Social Democratic Party). They now vote like headless chickens. A residue of student-protest romanticism takes them on an Asian trip (with ‘Sisyphus Holidays’) parallel to that of their creators. But Grass’ couple exists only in potentia – ‘unjelled’. The Peterses never happened – except, somewhere, in the heads of the two German ‘creative’ artists.
What, then, did Grass and Schlöndorff give birth to? Or abort? What – when all the cards are in play – is more important: to create a novel (or a film) out of your head, or a child out of your loins? To create literature, or population? The future will tell.

[Ricardo Munguia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro bastante extraño, empieza siendo un libro de viajes, después se transforma en una pequeña novela para dar paso a un ensayo político. A pesar de eso me parece increíble que varias de las ideas que contiene mantienen vigencia en nuestros días, casi cuarenta años después de ser publicado.

El libro empieza cuando el autor y su esposa se encuentran de viaje en China y el autor hace una reflexión sobre la explosión demográfica de los países orientales y tercermundistas, comparada con el decrecimiento poblacional de su natal Alemania. El autor concluye que los alemanes se encuentran en peligro de extinción y que pasarán a los libros de historia como las civilizaciones helénicas o precolombinas de las que sobreviven solo sus relatos e ideas, esos "engendros mentales" ¿Pero cuál es el motivo de su extinción? Para explicarlo el autor "engendra mentalmente" una pareja alemana, Harm y Dörte Peters, profesores jóvenes, con una carrera consolidada, quienes debaten si deberían de tener un hijo o no, pues las condiciones económicas, políticas y globales rodean de incertidumbre el futuro de su descendencia.

El relato de Harm y Dörte se intercala con su viaje, pues mientras el autor se encuentra en China, sus personajes viajan a la India, y algunos sucesos que le ocurren al autor son incorporados en la historia de Harm y Dörte ficcionalizandoslos, mostrandonos el proceso del autor de como construye una historia. A parte de estas tres vertientes, se suma otra donde la voz del autor pasa de narrador a ensayista y expresa sus ideas sobre la política de la época, cuando Alemania estaba dividida pero forman una unidad que el llama "Nación cultural".

Esta duda que la joven pareja tiene es algo que mi generación también padece, y los argumentos que presentan son los mismos. Además el libro retoma las ideas de Orwell del estado vigilante y del mito de Sísifo de Camus, los cuales siguen con una vigencia en nuestros días. Las reflexiones del autor sobre la política y la migración también son válidas hoy en día (incluso hoy más que hace veinte años). Pero incluso dentro de la narración, la voz del autor sigue presente, haciéndonos consciente de su presencia y de que sus personajes son inventados.

Lo único malo que le encuentro al libro es que ni la narración ni el ensayo llegan a un punto culminante (hay una parte de la narración que se vuelve álgida, pero se supera rápidamente), estos dos aspectos se interrumpen y como dice el dicho "El que mucho abarca, poco aprieta". Creo que eso es lo que le sucedió a este libro, pues es bastante breve. Recomendado para aquellos quienes buscan una reflexión sobre la cultura, política y una historia donde la falta de intimidad y la decidía son fundamentales, sobretodo en el aspecto de traer un hijo ante un mundo incierto.

[El Viejo Mochales · Rating 2 out of 5]

Requiere un plus de esfuerzo de lectura-comprensión. A medio camino entre el ensayo y la novela corta con cierto regusto existencialista. Escrita en 1979, cuando Alemania todavía se encontraba dividida, y bajo la excusa de que Volker Schlöndorff va a dirigir una película escrita por el propio Grass –ya lo hizo con El Tambor de Hojalata-, el autor va fantaseando con el devenir de la pareja de protagonistas, los profesores Harm y Dörte Peters antes, durante y después de su viaje por Asia, con el dilema de tener o no un hijo en una época de incertidumbre, como fue el inicio de la década de los 80, como principal motor dramático.
(Los alemanes) “Comprenden cualquier enigma, pero no se comprenden a sí mismos“. (p.143)
Reclama Grass el papel unificador de la literatura para toda Alemania. Otros temas: la migración de los pueblos (India, China, México, Egipto,…) hacia Europa y más concretamente a Alemania, las energías nucleares, el control de la natalidad, el presente-futuro político, las innovaciones tecnológicas, el armamento (armarse para desarmarse), el agotamiento de toda una (joven todavía) generación, etc.
Demasiadas referencias, en fin, a coyunturas políticas y sociales alemanas de la época y con continuos saltos en el tiempo y el lugar. No ha llegado el libro a captar mi interés de una manera considerable. Aburrido.

[Tate Kaufman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Forgive the perhaps insulting comparison, but reading this feels as if I'm listening to a Joe Rogan podcast with Eddie Bravo or Alex Jones, only it's 2050 and all the discussed issues are long resolved. Grass is having a one sided conversation with the reader - elaborating his theories, frame of mind, aspirations, ideas, and political takes. It's entertaining to be sure, and the framing device is rather fascinating, with Grass inventing how two characters of a potential screenplay would interact with the various environments he encounters while traveling.

The details and the topic are all very specific, and lacking an adequate knowledge in post-war German political history, it's hard to connect all the dots. Nonetheless, the overall musings on temporality and nationhood are fascinating. This is perhaps the best example of a book dating itself that I've ever seen, and for better or worse it's an interesting read - but to be honest, I'm just not sure I (or most contemporary audiences) can "get" it.

[Kezia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit "inside baseball" being that I'm unfamiliar with 1970s-80s German politics (I was a child, I had other things to do), but not hard to pick up the themes. The themes, of course, are largely the same today.

I enjoyed the layers he was working, the fiction/fact, present/future dynamic, though I would have enjoyed more Harm and Dörte and less Gunther. However his obituary for Nicolas Born had me in tears.

On a personal note, once I realized as a young woman that procreating is optional, about 25 years ago, I've been no-to-baby for ethical and environmental reasons. This is the only piece of literature I've ever encountered that tackles what is surely the single most significant decision a human being can make: whether or not to make another human being.

3.5 for the book, 5 stars for the sausage and 4 stars for the slutty cat who said yes-to-babies.

[laila · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked the style of explaining a narrative basically as one concocts it. Also, I like Cold War Germany as a setting.
Only thing is that Grass very often goes on long tangents that I’m sure make sense to him but when externalised turn to gibberish. It’s like when you explain a dream to someone and it’s so vivid and tangible to you but you just know that words can’t capture the experience, it’s like you just have to get it to get it. Around seven pages of Headbirths felt this way, like looking at a Rorschach test but, try as you might, only seeing ink smudges.
On the bright side, it had some great elements that were reminiscent of his magnum opus, my chosen phantasmagoria, The Tin Drum.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strangely relevant in smaller ways, but very seeped in its time period and geographical politics. Also very strange: Grass reads like a German Vonnegut at times, but his humor is either not as striking or lost on me or there is none. The book is part memoir it seems, part fiction, part obituary, part notes on a film (never made?)—a truly “postmodern” novel in that way.

[Shelley Alongi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second Gunter Grass book I have read this year. I probably should have read this book 1st because somewhere in the middle of all the humor and sarcasm and serious contemplations he explains that he has written about different parts of German history from what I would consider his unique perspective. If I had read that first I probably would’ve understood the other book a little differently. I think this book deserves a second read but I also think that I should read up on more of my 1980s history before I do that. As I went further into the storyline such as it is I remembered the classes that I took in the 1980s. I first started studying German as a language in college and in the reading sections they talked about some of these things. Most notably, he discusses in centers his story around the decreasing birth rate of the Germans. I remember reading about that. He contracts it with the multiplying of the Chinese and Indian populations. He also asks in a sarcastic way if the World could stand it if the Germans multiplied like the Chinese and the Indians. When looking at the impact on world history in the 20th century that could be a frightening answer. But once you pass 1945 it might not be such a bad answer. The thing about going to the grass is that he expects you to know what he’s talking about because he doesn’t come right out and tell you what specific event he’s talking about when he mentions one. And some of his writing is a little bit abstract but I think it would be more easily understood once you grasp the basic concepts of the German experience probably going back from Frederick the great to the modern era. Yet he may go back further in some of his books but I haven’t read enough to know for sure. I do like his writing and I do like his style. He was born in 1927 same year as my grandmother. She was born here in the United States. They both experienced the same years from different perspectives. I don’t know why I found that interesting. He talks about being 12 years old when the world second world war ended. He always brings you back to that 12 year period of the third Reich whatever book he writes and wherever he is. But he covers it in such a way that you don’t always know that’s what he’s talking about unless you know that’s what he’s talking about. And then sometimes he’s very open about discussing the third Reich. But then he brings back different time periods in German history which is why I suggested that he takes you back to Frederick the great. He may take us back further it’s just that I’m probably the most familiar with History from Frederick the great on up to the modern era. It is partly because he does bring all of those time periods and to focus in some kind of way that I’ve actually read up on other parts of history because the third Reich is my forte. So I always know when he’s talking about that specific time period. It is advisable to be prepared when reading any book by Gunter Grass to be taken on some kind of a trip through German history no matter what it is. I think his books read like a post modern academic author that I once read for a post modern approach to history class that I took in my last year of college. And it’s not always easy to understand the post modern writings, at least not in my experience. But that’s kind of a digression although when I read this book I thought about it in those terms.

I should mention that I read this in English. One note I will make about the translator is that he does a very good job of translating labyrinthian sentences. I know this because Alfred Manheim, the translator of this book also rendered rendered Mein Kampf into English and I think for that job alone he deserves a medal. So I was very excited to see that he had translated this Gunter grass novel because I knew it would be an accurate rendering of the text.

Gunter Grass in taking us through the multiple layers of this story leaves us where we started leaves us where he started so I’m not sure that there’s ever a satisfactory conclusion to his story of the couple on vacation trying to figure out whether or not they were going to have a baby. That’s The central premise of the story, and around he inserts the political figures and the important issues surrounding the 1980 election. Joseph Strauss the “Bavarian bore” and a familiar name Helmut Schmidt who became German chancellor. Environmentalism, decreasing birth rates in Germs y, culture, religion, and an ever present exploration of the past, present and future “paspresture” are his subjects.

Gunter Grass admittedly is not yet the easiest author to understand in all of his complexity. I am hopeful however that with more familiarization of the German historical experience in all its facets I will grasp his meanings more clearly. I like his writing style. I first read about Gunter Grass in a book called A Short Introduction to German Literature. Since I was more familiar with the 20th century I decided to investigate his work. His writing leaves me wanting to know more so if an author does that for me I consider his writing whatever it is to be a success.In order to understand it I need to broaden my own historical horizons. That is the mark of a good author.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Der Mann kann schreiben. Aber was soll dieser Mist?

[Dilek Uzunoğlu · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Ve verileri, sayıları, formülleri fiilleri depolayan beyinleriyle çocuklar her şeyi bilecekler, ama hiçbir şey bilmeyecekler. "

"İçim tamamen boşalmışsa
Gerçekliğin intikamıdır bu."

[Kyle]

I learned that ,,Vergegenkunft" = "paspresenture." Also, as many fresh observations as dated.

[Kate Nadolski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do not recommend for inflight reading.

[Rudyard, Lord Falkland · Rating 1 out of 5]

The translation turns what might have been another example of Grass's usual back and forth narrative into a jumbled mess

[Alyssa Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is an absurdist book not in its content but in its structure; the actual plot (a professor couple traveling to give a lecture on Chinese and German population control while arguing about whether they want to have a baby) isn't particularly gripping, but the fluid perspective between narrator and author keeps you locked into the book and wondering what's going to come next, how the story is going to be rewritten with the new lens that the author chooses. it's confusing and wonderful, ridiculous and yet absolutely ordinary.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written in 1979, this book is definitely a product of its time. It follows Harm and Doerte Peters, presented as the West German "everycouple" of that period - I didn't find them likeable or very engaging, but I don't think that was the point. Grass is quite effective at using them to portray his own thoughts on various subjects.

The storyline is that Harm and Doerte take a guided holiday around Asia, and various population related questions are posed by this at the numerous places they visit (including their West German home before and after the trip). Having worked in the area of Schleswig-Holstein that Grass has set up at the Peters' home, my mind's eye can picture them when he makes lengthy lists of place names such as Itzehoe, Krempe, Glueckstadt, Wilster... But I can imagine it would get tiring for those that have not visited these places. Did my little list bore you there? If so, prepare for more of the same in the book.

I found a test of my will to engage with "Headbirths" quite early on in the book - Grass appears to use some energy to conjure up a scenario in his mind that if he had been born 10 years earlier, he might just have been in the SS. Of course, a quarter of a century later, it was revealed that he had actually been in the Waffen SS. I can imagine some people putting the book down at this point, but I would not suggest doing that.

Ultimately though, I found the book a little unsatisfying. It posed a number of will-it, won't-it kind of questions and I don't think it answered any of them. (If you're wondering, Brokdorf power station was actually built, eventually). However, as a historical document and an unusual insight into the FDR in 1979, I would recommend it. Possibly one of the greatest accolades I can offer it is that the next book I read will also be one by Guenter Grass. 3 stars.

[Thany · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t love this book, but the interesting structure and narrative forms kept me reading. Definitely learned a lot about late-70s German culture!

**read in response to the popsugar reading challenge prompt “a book whose author has flora or fauna in their name”**

[Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not exactly a novel in the classic sense but it doesn't fit neatly into any other category either. Perhaps 'metafiction' suits it best.

Herr Grass himself appears frequently, identifying himself as the author who has created the couple the 'metanovel' focuses on -- specifically their ongoing "yes to baby, no to baby" debate.

It's supposed to be a witty play on his part, using the idea that Germans have babies in their heads (just as he has 'hatched' the two characters) while in Asia they are producing real, flesh-and-blood infants at a fantastic rate.

Similar gimmicky devices and discussions follow which are hit-or-miss. Add in some dated references to the politics in 1982 divided Germany and there are chunks of this book that aren't all that interesting.

The issue of flagging birth rates in the West versus soaring birthrates in the 3rd world is an interesting one, but I don't feel like my thoughts on it changed at all from reading this short book.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was felt to be more of apolemic than a narrative. That's fine, nothing wrong with a rant every now and then. I think I finished this one in a single sitting, some unknown afternoon in the Highlands.