The Rat [Hardcover]

Gunter Grass (Author), Ralph Manheim (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1987

A major new work from Germany's greatest modern writer, this wildly imaginative yet superbly told novel revives some of Grass's most famous characters from his novels The Tin Drum, Headbirths, and The Flounder, as it tells the story of a female rat who engages the narrator in a series of dialogues convincingly demonstrating that the rats will inherit a devastated earth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The marvelous flounder, resurrected from the novel of that name, appears in Grass's new novel, his first large work of fiction since the talking fish swam into view, accompanied here by singing jellyfish. The tin drummer, now a balding man of 60 hampered by a bothersome prostate, also returns. A melange of fable, history, polemic, diatribe and jeremiad, its prose interspersed with verse, The Rat is a teeming sea of story and saga that defies brief description and amply displays Grass's fecund imagination. The She-rat is a Christmas gift requested by the narrator, and she is a mixed blessing, devoting herself mostly to denouncing the human race and its legacy of garbage, radioactive trash, toxic chemicals. Contemptuously ridiculing humankind's pretensions, she informs the narrator that she and her kind are "sick" of the stories by which man seeks to sustain himself, "to put off the end with words," and the quarrel between them takes on the weight and seriousness of moral judgment, just as Grass's gifts of fantasy and his strong, skeptical intelligence vie for dominance in his fiction. Manheim's heroic translation lucidly conveys Grass's linguistic idiosyncrasies, bizzare neologisms and madcap eccentricities. (June
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

And the rats shall inherit the earth, or so Grass concludes in this wonderful work of speculative virtuosity. With no less a subject before him than the ultimate fate of humankind, this superb German writer weaves together stories to produce an imaginative whole. As the oracular She-rat tells of humanity's demise and the rat's ultimate dominion, Grass himself fights back with memories and dreams, seeking to establish a better future through the acts of history and mind. Meanwhile, a barge crewed by women plies the Baltic Sea. And Oscar Matzerath, the drummer of Grass's early novel The Tin Drum, now appears as a 60-year-old film producer with a plan to film the natural world before it dies in chemical offal. Wildly entertaining as well as thought provoking. Paul E. Hutchison, English Dept., Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 371 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 1st edition (June 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151759200
• ISBN-13: 978-0151759200
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #576,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in Danzig, Germany, in 1927, Günter Grass is a widely acclaimed author of plays, essays, poems, and numerous novels. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Apocalypse Then, August 11, 2000

By 

Manuel Haas - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Rat (Paperback)

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.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Remarkable Book, February 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Rat (Paperback)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of his best, April 4, 2003

By 

Ross James Browne (Atlanta, Georgia United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Rat (Paperback)

_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.