User:Lit316/Gunter Grasse

Gunter Grasse, Germany’s most prominent contemporary writer, gives us a collection of stories in My Century, each representing a year of the German century. While not a true novel in the purest sense of such an idea, Grasse’s 100 narrators present linear-linked short stories, building a trail in My Century as simply as Gretel left bread crumbs in hopes of finding her way home. After recording murder, war and disasters along with scientific and technical discoveries; cultural achievements; and even sports highlights, Grasse gives us a way home leaving us hope for the future.

Grasse’s skill at connecting seemingly insignificant and large events; threading them together using his impeccable memory to hold up a mirror so that perhaps we can see ourselves as we too moved through the 20th century (this, of course, would apply more to those of us of German birth). Although a different “voice” narrates each story, Grasse’s skill lies in the linear threading of the first story begun in the year 1900, narrated by a former soldier in which he tells a tail of unbelievable brutality; to the last story, begun in 1999, and narrated by, I believe, Grasse’s own mother. In the end, Grasse leaves us with hope for the future. If, after all, if one lives to be 103, why not be unafraid to see what comes next?

Grasse was reared under the boot of National Socialism, and experienced all the scientific gifts and disasters of the 20th century. That his impeccable and expansive memory produced My Century, is to validate that Grasse remembers the past but lives in the present and looks forward to the future.