For most readers Günter Grass's work is so dominated by the Danzig trilogy that it is difficult to see what he wrote after it in the proper perspective. (p. 56)

The Danzig trilogy is an attempt on a grand scale to explore how things came to be the way they are now—an exploration of 'unbewältigte Vergangenheit.' This is a subject which is easy to treat in general terms and in so doing to allow it to escape into vagueness, leaving unexplained precisely those things which need explaining. Grass insists on the concrete, the detail, the apparently unimportant trifles which are the stuff of life for most of us and which gradually add up to something more impressive than mere abstract generalities…. Grass left Danzig when he was still a boy of seventeen and did not return to visit it until after his major work of...