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Title: Crabwalk by Gunter Grass ISBN: 0-15-100764-0 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 01 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.82 (17 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A lot to digest
Comment: In January 1945, the German cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff was sunk by a Russian submarine in the Baltic Sea, and took some 9,000 refugees with her to their deaths. In the late 1990s, journalist Paul Pokriefke, born to a survivor while the great ship was still sinking, decides to write about the sinking, which killed more people than any other maritime disaster and yet is invisible in most history books. But Paul must crabwalk through the story, scuttling between the past and the present, to look at the tragedy of the past and the echoes that are still ringing through Germany today.
I must admit that this is one of the most fascinating, and disquieting, books that I have read in a long time. Part of the book is history, which is both informative and heartrending (5 stars). The other part of the book deals with Germany, and the way that World War II affected Germany and still affects it today. It shows how many people did and still deal with the memory of the war, some praising and some damning what happened, and all trying to come to grips with it. This other part is gripping and highly thought provoking (also 5 stars).
I wish I could say more about this book. It is a lot to digest, and is resistant to any quick and easy analysis. Overall I thought that this is a great book, and I highly recommend it to you.
Rating: 5
Summary: Outstanding novel from a modern master
Comment: The suffering of ordinary Germans during the Second World War is a topic that for many years has been virtually off-limits for discussion. There have been several books recently, both fiction and non-fiction which however have tackled this subject head on and Crabwalk is one of them.
Set nominally in the present day, the narrater of this novel is Paul Pokriefke, an unsuccessful middle-aged journalist, with a failed marriage behind him. His mother, Tulla, was a passenger on the cruise liner Wilhelm Gustloff, sunk in January 1945 by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic with the loss of 9,000 lives, as it carried mainly civilian refugees away from the advancing Red Army. Paul himself is born on that fateful night after his pregnant mother is rescued. After being asked to write about this incident, he comes across a right-wing website dedicated to the memory of the liner and its namesake, a Nazi official murdered by a Jewish student in 1936. He discovers the website is run by his alienated son Konrad and is subsequently forced to deal with the effects that traumatic night has had on three generations of his family.
The crabwalk of the title refers to the erratic, unpredictable path back and forth in time which Paul must take in trying to reach an understanding of the war-time events which have shaped his and his family's existence. The narrative therefore flits between several storylines. There is Paul's own investigations on the internet and the strange relationship he discovers between his son and his main online antagonist, who calls himself "David", after the name of the Jewish student who assassinated Gustloff. There is the story of the Russian submarine commander who is fated to be responsible for the sinking of the liner and its massive loss of life. There is his mother's story, one of the few survivors of the sinking, who after the war remains in East Germany as a committed socialist yet who defines herself in terms of her experiences during the Nazi era and is determined to exert influence over her grandson Konrad. And there is Paul himself, an aimless, un-ambitious individual, a second-rate journalist whose life has been overshadowed by events outside of his control.
This is a powerful and thought provoking novel, yet written in a relatively unemotional style and very elegantly structured. It is a short novel yet wonderfully constructed and executed. The central theme is of course the denial of Germany's suffering during the war, or rather the suffering of ordinary individuals. The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff is possibly the worst maritime disaster in history, yet it has been excised from western popular culture, replaced, as is pointed out at one stage, in the public consciousness by films such as Titanic and so forth. The failure of Germany's post war generation, exemplified by Paul, to collectively deal openly with the guilt and suffering of their wartime parents is seen to drive younger generations towards the dark side of the equation. Post war Germany sought refuge in economic progress and reconstruction, its people seeking to exorcise the Nazi era by rebuilding a bright new European nation over its ashes. Paul is an example of someone falling by the wayside, unable to forget his wartime heritage and get on with life along with the rest of society. Consequently, as his career and family life is one of disappointment and failure he is unable to guide his son properly, who by himself inevitably ends up being drawn to the negative implications of Germany's defeat. Konrad seeks revenge on the Jews and demands that Wilhelm Gustloff's "martydom" is properly recognised.
The ending of the book is bleak. Failure to deal with the war is leading a new generation to repeat old mistakes with the danger arising of an unending cycle of violence and recrimination. Konrad is the example, unable to place the terrible suffering of his grandmother in its proper context and therefore learn from history. With the Tin Drum and Too Far Afield, Gunther Grass became the master of the Zeitgeist novel and a masterful commentator on his native Germany. He succeeds again with Crabwalk.
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent view of contemporary Germany
Comment: Gunter Grass, born in Danzig, has seen Germany emerge from the rubble of the Second World War, through its division and reuinification, into the 21st century as one of the leading powers in the European Union. "The Tin Drum" explored repressed Nazi episodes, "Too Far Afield," the persistent wounds of the Cold War, and now, in "Crabwalk," how Germany attempts to come to terms with this tumultuous half century and move on. The story span three generations of Germans, but one sentence sums up the contemporary mindset of the country: "The Germans keep flushing and flushing, but the sh*t keeps coming up."
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Title: Elizabeth Costello by J. M. Coetzee ISBN: 0670031305 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 09 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Danzig Trilogy Of Gunter Grass: A Study of the Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse, and Dog Years by Gunter Grass ISBN: 0151238162 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: 15 October, 1987 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass ISBN: 067972575X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 16 January, 1990 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Austerlitz by Winfried Georg Sebald, Anthea Bell ISBN: 0375756566 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 03 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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