Dog Years / Gunter Grass

Review


Dog Years is a meditation on modern history in the guise of a novel, a study of Germany before, during and after the Second World War, a tale of the interrelated fortunes of two friends, Walter Matern, Aryan, and Eddi Amsel, half-Jew. In its well-nigh stupefying length, in its almost ritual use of distortions, shifting perspectives, and completely unaccommodating, dispassionate weaving of minutiae (at once quaint, brutal, and poetic), and in the terrible geniality of its denunciatory spirit and in its disgusts, it is without doubt one of the most astonishing literary performances since Finnegans Wake. It is also, naturally, one of the most troubling.