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by: Gunter Grass
List Price: $22.00Amazon.com's Price: $17.60 You Save: $4.40 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 3 weeks
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 833.914
EAN: 9780156319355
ISBN: 0156319357
Label: Harvest Books
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 560
Publication Date: May 05, 1989
Publisher: Harvest Books
Sales Rank: 688678
Studio: Harvest Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
It all begins in the Stone Age, when a talking fish is caught by a fisherman at the very spot where millennia later Grass's home town, Danzig, will arise. Like the fish, the fisherman is immortal, and down through the ages they move together. As Grass blends his ingredients into a powerful brew, he shows himself at the peak of his linguistic inventiveness. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - a wonderful work
Truly an epic journey. The story combines many themes and just as many characters. One must read about half to get a grasp on the reins and after that, it's fun. Cooking and copulation play large roles. All the talk about soup and the endless mushrooms are fantastic. Throughout the text are poems and songs. At first, they don't seem to relate. But one comes to expect them after a time. This is a big change from the style of the Danzig trilogy, much more modern. Grass makes some interesting ... Read More
Rating:  - Not Exactly Sashimi Quality
Gunter Grass, I love you, but "The Flounder" just isn't a sashimi quality piece of fish. It's really more something out of the frozen food section.
"The Tin Drum", the author's first book, remains one of the most white hot brilliant novels written in the last 100 years. It's the kind of book that in every sentence shows the desperate need the author had to tell his tale.
By contrast, "The Flounder" is a tepid excercise that expresses no such fiery need. Sure, there are ... Read More
Rating:  - Grass' weakest effort, by far
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 ... Read More
Rating:  - I can't believe it's out of print...
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.
Rating: - check it out
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.
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