The Tin Drum
Die Blechtrommel
First published AD 1959, written in German
The Tin Drum is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass, the first book of his Danzig Trilogy. It was adapted into a 1979 film, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980.
Your reading
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Which translation to read
Breon Mitchell2009Our pick
Restores the passages cut from the first translation and keeps Grass's wordplay.
Ralph Manheim1961
The classic first version, fluent but trimmed.
Where it is set
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What it draws on
- The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
Laurence Sterne, AD 1759
Like Sterne's narrator, Günter Grass's Oskar Matzerath tells his life from before his own birth, digressing and doubling back. The drumming memoir shares Tristram Shandy's comic, unreliable delight in the act of telling.
Source: Wikidata
Wikidata records The Tin Drum as inspired by The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Read it there
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