Dog Years – Gunter Grass Alleen Vandaag

Beschrijving

Dog Years

Hundejahre, translated by Ralph Manheim

Two boys and a dog are on the banks of a river, watching debris stream by–furniture, uniforms from past wars, clothing from other eras, the carcasses of cats and farm animals. In other words, German history.

The two friends are Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel, who is not-so-secretly half-Jewish. Eddi is an artist and a thinker; Matern is more physical, acting as his bodyguard. With a gang of friends, he was happily beating the overweight Eddi in the schoolyard, when for no reason he could understand, he suddenly switched sides.

The two boys are inseparable, growing up together in the flat farmland near the Vistula. One day, little Amsel discovers that he’s an artist; he makes scarecrows out of sticks and pipes and discarded clothing, wonderful scarecrows that do a miraculous job of scaring the crows away. Everyone wants one. But over time, the scarecrows come to resemble people he knows, culminating in a fearsome bird monster. The townspeople turn on him, making him destroy his collection and his studio, forcing him to leave town. // Later in the novel, when Hitler is firmly in control of Germany, Amsel, now a young man, smiles and tries eagerly to fit in. In the novel’s most chilling scene, Matern, seduced by the deadly tribal brotherhood of the Storm Troopers, leads a brutal attack on his oldest friend, viciously breaking every one of his teeth. A changed Eddi Amsel rises from the earth, packs a suitcase and slips away into the night.

The second section of the novel is written as a series of letters from the morally ambivalent everyman Harry Liebenau to his beloved cousin Tula, detailing their childhood, his experiences as a soldier, and the history and pedigree of the German Shepherd Prinz, Hitler’s favorite dog. The final part of the narrative belongs to a repentant Walter, with a hilariously vengeful tour through postwar Germany, eventually bringing him back together with his old friend Amsel.

I don’t have the words to properly laud this immensely powerful book. It’s a distillation of poetic wordplay, human nature, philosophy, myth and history. It is by turn gentle, witty, wise, unforgiving, sorrowing, frightening, compassionate, critical, and savagely funny. Dog Years is a masterpiece of German literature, a deep, long, broad exploration of that terrible time in history when millions of ordinary people, all together, took leave of their senses–a book that manages to be an apology, a celebration, and a warning.

(Package Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.4 x 0.7 inches Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces)

For further NOTES See also the BACK of the book!