In the early 1980s the Cold War was on its last legs, but at the time it did not quite feel that way. Especially in Europe, many people were afraid that the new more sophisticated nuclear missiles would sooner or later destroy humanity. At the same time there were growing worries about the environment, as trees and whole forests seemed to be dying from the exposure to pollution. That is the background of Grass' novel "The Rat", which is his own version of the Apocalypse.

The construction of the novel is very intricate, poems and prose interweave several plots. The rat of the title is a pet which the narrator keeps, and which suddenly starts telling him about the end of humanity in a nuclear war; rats survive and found a new civilisation. The narrator does not want to accept this and starts telling stories to prove to the rat that he still exists. There definitely is a feeling of endgame about the novel, as Grass summons characters from earlier novels (such as Oskar from "The Tin Drum"), all the women he has loved (the five of them corss the Baltic Sea in a boat) and his native Danzig-Gdansk as if to say goodbye to them all. In another subplot, characters from well-known fairytales try to start a kind of revolution to save the German forests.

Much of this is very poignant, some of it full of brilliant black humour, yet somehow I get the impression that maybe Grass tried to do too much here. The novel is far from being a page turner. As both the rat and the narrator insist on their points of view, some annoying repetitions occur. - To me it seemed quite dated, too. Even Grass himself seems to be less worried about the end of the world today, as his recent novels are more concerned with the injustices of German unification. That said, "The Rat" is representative of its time - and it is a daring vision which few writers of Grass' standing have attempted. Maybe it will prove a case of greatness which was not recognized in its own time.

_The Rat_ is my favorite novel by Gunter Grass. It is miserly and potent, with very little wasted space or filler. It is an almost continuous stream-of-conscience monologue; it is the nonstop ranting and raving of an angst-ridden person in the midst of a spiritual crisis, venting his frustration and confusion. Overall, this technique proves to be a very successful literary device. It reads almost like nonfiction philosophy, and because Grass does not get bogged down with an absurd plot and characterization, this novel provides an ideal vehicle for his undiluted spiritual-philosophical beliefs. Keep in mind, however, that there is very little in the way of action, charaterization, and concrete plot events in this novel. If you are looking for a more traditional novel, you may want to look elsewhere. Nevertheless, I still believe this is Grass' best work because it is personal and revealing with regards to his deepest sources of philosophical angst and spiritual misgivings. I recommend this book to anyone who really wants to know what is going on in the mind of Gunter Grass.

One of the best books I have read in a long time. I agree that this book is very dense with symbolism, but I think that this is a virtue, not a fault. Grass orchestrates an amazing chaos through out the book, tying together themes as diverse as the death of fairy-tales, the destruction of the environment, human attitudes toward rats, and a host of other ideas, and somehow turns them into something remarkable. For all its different plot lines, I felt a unity running through this book that few authors could have achieved.

This book is certainly not for everyone, and I would not advise reading it until after you have read "The Tin Drum" and "The Flounder" both by Grass, but for me this book was a remarkable reading experience.

This second installment of the Danzig Trilogy was an overall disappointment. While Gunter Grass's flair for story-telling is all here, Cat and Mouse does not stretch into the varied themes touched by Tin Drum (..the first book of the trilogy). Cat and Mouse reads more like an early John Irving novel (..with a German/Polish twist) rather than profound literature (with all due respect to Mr. Irving, who has written some wonderful stuff in recent years).

Cat and Mouse is a story growing up (..mostly high school years) in German occupied Poland during WW II. The characters are quirky (..especially the boy with a protruding Adam's apple) and amusing. But this coming-of-age tale has been told better elsewhere.

Bottom line: read Tin Drum. Cat and Mouse will seem stale (and hastily written) by comparison, but fans of Gunter Grass probably won't complain much.

It is true that Grass is always a sweet read and this book is no exception. Do not be confused by the incorrect synopsis which is about a cheap American thriller. Grass has not lowed his high standards. He has written a moving, informative tale of youth in war-time Poland. The story is short, but powerful. Well worth a couple hours of your time.

I first read Cat and Mouse without the benefit of having read The Tin Drum beforehand, and I missed a lot. Cat and Mouse is the second book in Grass' Danzig Trilogy, three books that look at life in Danzig under the Nazi regime from three different points of view (the tales are told concurrently, and time can be fixed by seeing the same event from different points of view; for example, the picnic taken by the jazz trio and Schmuh in Book III of The Tin Drum shows up towards the end of Cat and Mouse, and Matern, one of the main characters of Dog Years, shows up in The Onion Cellar, where Oskar's jazz band is retained, in The Tin Drum).

Cat and Mouse is actually a novella, originally a part of Dog Years that broke off and took on a life of its own; on the surface it is the tale of Joachim Mahlke, a high school student with a protruding adam's apple (the Mouse of the title), and his fascination with a sunken Polish minesweeper after he learns to swim at the age of thirteen. It is also the story of Pilenz, the narrator and Mahlke's best friend. The two spend their high school years in wartime Poland, reacting to various things, and that's about as much plot as this little slice of life needs.

The interesting thing about Cat and Mouse is its complete difference in tone from the other two novels. Both The Tin Drum and (what I've read so far of) Dog Years have the same high-pitched, almost hysterical humor combined with a profound sense of teleology (not surprising given the apocalyptic nature of life in Danzig under the Nazis); Grass attempts to confront the horror with over-the-top slapstick, because only through that kind of comparison is it possible to make the reader understand. But while Cat and Mouse has its moments of the same kind of ribald humor, it is more dignified, in a sense, and closer to reality; enough so, at least, that when the book reaches its inevitable climax and denoument, one feels more genuine, or more human, reactions to the fates of Pilenz and Mahlke than one does to Oskar, the hero of The Tin Drum. Perhaps that is why it was segmented off from Dog Years; perhaps there was another reason. Whatever the case, it stands on its own and as an integral part of Grass' magnum opus.

The writing was nice (though of course in translation) and the eye for detail and dialogue are both top notch. My ability to "connect" with this book, however, was not so good. Maybe that's my fault (ok, it is my fault), but I'm sure that others in America will have the same trouble. I can understand Nobel consideration just on his ability, but I'd have to read more than just this one (all I've read) to say I agree with the award. I just don't know anything about Poland or Germany. I'm sure that many others don't either. If you don't, you can still enjoy the writing, but that's probably where it will end, since the whole book will end up feeling very foreign. For me it was a distraction. If you want to read some Grass, I would recommend starting with something else...I wish I had. Overall, just average, I'm glad I read it, but I had higher expectations than it was able to meet.

It's an interesting book... if you know Gdansk or Poland. It is interesting because in this book Grass goes beyond his usual calls for Polish-German reconciliation. He suggests -- in no uncertain terms -- that if Poles want the Germans to accept the Polish authority over Gdansk, they themselves have to accept Lithuanian authority over Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, which belonged to Poland for a number of years between the two world wars. Making this observation is very important given that we, Polish people, usually see ourselves as victims of history and rarely as culprits.

One of the main qualities of the story is that it creates a very detailed picture of the very near future of Gdansk -- a future in which a park near the Gdansk Polytechnic gets converted into a German cementary, where certain German-Polish-Lithuanian reconciliation efforts are under way. Reading all the detailed descriptions of all the things Grass sees changing in Gdansk convinces me of his good knowledge of the city. The drawback of it is that the book is heavily time-stamped and probably not that interesting to those, who do not know Gdansk or, at least, Poland.

Reconciliation and forewell. As in the "Danzig trilogy", canvas of exclusively humane interplay of reconciliation's, changes and departures are painted. Grass commands knowledge of Polish and German things. Be it geography, local idioms, smell of the country sides. Descriptions of farmers market, streets and places, details of the appearance of mushroom (Boletus edulis), even description of soil is vivid. For a reader who, in his past, lived in Gdansk and knows first hand conditions of life in Poland, this book is a nostalgic trip into memories, source of reflections. There is this poetic melancholy in accepting changing world : ideals replaced with organised greed; Families decaying and destroyed; Brick wall coming down, walls between people building; Lakes desacrated by developments, their waters no more holding crawfish. Author is a keen judge of new world. He ackowledges manipulative genius of a great leader, and shallow pettiness of small; he regrets indiscriminate killings and impersonal wars of present.; he see ingrained prejudices (Polish vitriolic russophobia, German xenophobia) even in otherwise good people. Mellow and enchanting account of fast changing world. - For better ?

das buch hat mich sehr bewegt und mir ermöglicht mich besser in schnecken hineinzuversetzen. ich kann jetzt alle schnecken verstehen und bekomme depressionen wenn jemand in unserem garten schneckenkorn verstreut. hiermit möchte ich alle freunde der literatur aufrufen: verbüdnet euch gegen die unterdrückung der schnecken!

This is Gunter Grass exploring large themes such as fulfillment, joy, and the nature of society, using a farcical tale of a German couple traveling to Asia on a "reality tour," (Grass wrote this in 1979! amazing!) and the leitmotif of human reproduction they encounter there. Well, it's not actually about the couple, but about the filmmaker who creates this couple for his movie -- but you'll find out more when you read it. A great, fun, short, one-sitting read. Grass has a wonderful talent for setting scenes and picturing the absurd. This is not your father's German novel.

Encuento que este es un libro dificil de leer, es muy largo y ademas como que uno no logra identificarse con los personajes y entender la historia. Tal vez es que el libro tiene muchas metaforas y yo no las logre descifrar. Tengo curiosidad por ejemplo en lo que se refiere a las cuatro faldas que usaba la abuela de Oscar, cual es el significado para el. Srea dificil de saber. He tratado de encontrar algunas resenas sobre el libro y no lo he conseguido. Quizas la revision de otro lector me ayude a entender un poco de que se trata.

Me parece que es un libro increiblemente bien escrito, digno de un genio y que definitivamente vale la pena leer, probablemente las personas que no vivimos la primera y segunda guerra mundial no podamos comprender algunos acontecimientos, pero las impresiones del autor acerca de los hechos son puramente impresionistas, y tomando en cuenta la epoca en que fue escrito es una obra de arte!!

....Reading this book you realise the big distance between "exciting" to "amazing". And I have to say that I have been amazed. This is the first book I ever read of Günter Grass and his style left me speechless. There are (many) paragraphs that I re-read several times, not because of difficulties in understanding, but because of the undescriptable sensation I got. But style is not the only memorable issue here. Seeing the world through Oskar's eyes makes you feel as if you were loking at yourself, being convinced that stupidness became so usual that you cannot distinguish it anymore. Of course you will not like it if you are a fan of, let's say, Michael Crichton... This would be like comparing Beethoven with the Spice Girls!...

by my record, roy clouser has written the most god-awful book ever printed in the united states. at times i had trouble getting through the book w/o vomiting on the pages penned by this lunatic. i feel for all the poor kids who were forced to buy this crap for any class.

Roy Clouser's Myth is indeed a clear exposition of the philosophical orientation of Herman Dooyeweerd. But potential readers will not only find an interesting connection with his Dutch calvinist background. The book is an original argument in its own terms. It is not simply a re-statement of an established position "applied" to a new (North American) context. Clouser is copncerned about common views of theory and theorising. He is also concerned with the theories which explain religious experience. To say that theoretical and scientific thinking implies religious world-views can get us into debate where all we end up with is dogma confronting dogma. Clouser painstakingly looks at the character of religious experience and theoretical thought. He shows by logical argument, and then by careful application in various scientific areas (mathematics, psychology, sociology among others) that theories are inherentlreligious. Those claiming to come clean with their religious presuppositions are not doing anything more than those who claim to be religiously neutral. Except they are facing up to the inner reality of their theorising as a religious activity. And this can make a whole world of difference to how scientific research and theoretical debate unfolds. Clouser makes a convincing case for reconsidering the entire scientific enterprise on these terms.

Clouser's argument is that there are only three possible basic assumptions of what is "Ultimate"; and all theoretical thinking must ground itself in one or another of these metaphysical frameworks. If you start with his section on "case studies" of famous scientists and philosophers, he demonstrates his point so clearly that you'll be hooked into reading the whole book.

Gunter Grass, The Flounder (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977)

I just couldn't get through it. I can't really put my finger on why, but there it is. The Flounder contains all the things I revere about Grass-- a strong sense of history, scurrlious sense of humor, strong characters put into wonderfully unrealistic situations. But this novel, Grass' weightiest (literally), never seems to come together in all the little ways that made similarly large tomes like The Tin Drum and Dog Years such wonderful reads.

The Flounder is a massive creation myth, seen through the eyes of a continually-reincarnated man, his continually-reincarnated longtime companion (who is always a cook of some sort), and the Flounder himself, who serves as a kind of fairy-godfather figure. In modern times, a group of feminists discover that the Flounder has been the architect of the overthrow of matriarchal society and put him on trial; the narrator and the Flounder use the trial as a method to go back over history and show the development of patriarchy in Poland, and how it relates to the potato. Yes, I'm serious.

The novel feels as if Grass had lost his sense of dynamic while writing it. The earlier long novels each keep the reader's interest with a series of climactic events, each leading up to the larger climax upon which the novel turns; The Flounder, on the other hand, continues on at the same rlatively leisurely pace in its survey of history. And that, ultimately, is its downfall; there's just too much of it without anything really going on, on a larger scale.

Definitely a bad starting place for Grass; turn to the Danzig trilogy instead. (zero)

I read this book when it first came out (1980?), and have read, in English or German, 4 other novels by GG. All were wonderful, but this was my favorite. It's "magic realism" that's both thought-provoking and very entertaining, and so well-written and translated. It's really too bad that it's out of print.

An outstanding statment by Grass on history, feminism, cooking and Joycean bodily details which encapsulates the obssession by the Germans of systems, machoness and abstractions that have led to disaster. But the book is a balanced look at the effects of excess feminism as well.

Gunter Grass, Show Your Tongue (1989, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich)

Much of The Call of the Toad, especially the character of Chatterjee, was planted in Grass' head during an almost-six-month trip to India in the mid-eighties. Show Your Tongue is Grass' travel diary of that time, a hundred pages of text, a hundred pages of drawings, and a long poem. The whole thing is in diary style (of course), impressionist, but with the sense of the diarist who is also a Nobel-winning writer; while most people would lean too heavily towards one side or the other, Grass balances fact and opinion to give as much an objective picture of what he sees around him as he can. His descriptions are, as usual, excellent, and while he rarely allows any overtly sociopolitical speech to enter the milieu of his travel diary, his disgust at what he sees infuses every word. Showing one's tongue, in Hindu culture, is a sign of shame. Grass, coming from the somewhat neat and orderly (at the time) world of West Germany, finds much for India, and in retrospect his own country, to be shamed about. He talks to many about India's "longing for a Hitler figure" (according to many of those he talked to, Ghandi was considered an anomaly, and the country's real hero is WW2 general Subhas Chandra Bose, a Nazi sympathizer who worked closely with the Japanese on a plan to crush Russia between the two countries' armies), the caste system, the awful treatment of the Chinese immigrant population, the mountains of garbage, and other similarly controversial topics. But as he exposes all this and compares it to the Germany both of the 1980s and that of the 1940s, he cannot help but be awed by the beauty of India. This was not Grass' first trip to the country, and during the fifteen years in between trips, he longed to go back. Ultimately, it is this kind of division that informs the book more than anything; attraction and repulsion, outrage and acceptance, Germany and India. ***

i don't know what the hell was going on. those damn yanks don't know what they're talking about. i could write a better book than this with my toes.

I was ensnared into reading this book by the promising name of the author. While I do not regret having read this book, I do not think that this does measure up to the 'Tin Drum'. If you are planning to read Grass for the first time, tehn this is not the book to get started with.

Some people, especially those who can not find fault with anything, least of all with literature, might say that the humor here is subtle as compared with the humor of the 'Tin Drum' where it was more ribald. To use the word 'subtle' in that sense would be more a misuse of the term than anything else. The humor remains dark here. The background remains war and nazi Germany. But still the main the theme is that of an adolescent hero (Mahlke) and hero-worship by the narrator (Pilenz) and others.

It would be a fair asumption that most of us have had some heroes during our school days. Therefore it is not too difficult to identify with the theme and the narrator of this book. The narrator here is Pilenz and his hero is Joachim Mahlke. Mahlke is a catholic teenager with an abnormally protruding Adams apple. He is a year older than the rest of the group. He is the best swimmer and diver and he often spends his time in a barge nearby the shore that went down during the war. He has the largest penis in the group and he is the most prolific masturbator. But he generally stays away from adulation. After a daring stealing act whereby he stole a nazi-German officer who was visiting his school, he gets expelled from his and the narrator's school. Later he joins the army and becomes a tanker. There also, he becomes a hero all of which is told in a 3rd persons voice. After his first furlough, he decides not to turn up for his military work again. Then an intrusting climax.

Throughout the novel, you have the nazi Germany and the unmentionable fuhrer as the background. The cruelty of that age is not explicitly stated here. It is amazing now for us , blessed with the advantage of hind sight, to observe that most of the Germans of that age did not recognize the fundamental evil of what they were supporting. They still had cold winters, they still had flowers bloom in spring, they still had wonderful swimming seasons in summer. The nazi youth's childhood was as naughty and gloomy as ours. Nothing was different, yet everything was fundamentally different. It is equally important in this context to note that the very reason for which our hero turns a deserter was not that he found out that he found war to be evil. It was more due to a combination of fear and boredom.

The prose here is at most times banal, unimaginative and boring. Compare that with the wit and intelligence of 'Tin Drum'. Only the descriptions of the church rituals and the sentences where all words are combined without period, commas etc remain the same.

I would recommend this book to someone who has already read Grass. If you are a first timer to Grass, start with the ' Tin Drum'. Otherwise, you would develop an 'anti Grass ' syndrome. Finally I must admit to be a Grass admirer.