[Günter Grass's] novel Der Butt (The Flounder) … seems to have put paid to the view that his recent work exhibits a continuous decline from the standard of his first novels….

Despite its characteristic baroque complexity of form the book has many immediately attractive features that make it fairly easy to understand why it has been so successful. It is probably the funniest book Grass has written; it contains some agreeable sensations, titillations, and provocations; and its subject is women's rights.

But it is a great deal more than an opportunistic exploitation of popular contemporary issues. It is at once an original contribution to the form of the novel, a more achieved success than The Diary of A Snail, and a serious contribution to discussion of the meaning of contemporary history. It brings to the subject of women in history an astonishing range and complexity of perspectives. (p...