Ralph Manheim
1) The tin drum
Author
Series
Language
English
Formats
Description
A fictional autobiography of thirty-year-old Oskar Matzerath who has lived through the long Nazi nightmare and who, as the novel begins, is being held in a mental institution. Willfully stunting his growth at three feet for many years, wielding his tin drum and piercing scream as anarchistic weapons, he provides a profound yet hilarious perspective on both German history and the human condition in the modern world.
Author
Publisher
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Pub. Date
c1963.
Language
English
Description
Brief and compact, the novel focuses on the extraordinary fate and person of one hero, Joachim Mahlke, fourteen years old when the story starts. Mahlke is set apart from his fellows by an unusual excrescence of cartilage, a huge Adam's apple, sign and symbol of precocious virility, at once embarrassing and stimulating to its bearer. When a classmate sics a cat on Mahlke's "mouse," he unwittingly launches him on a hero's career. In order to compensate...