The ''Danzig Trilogy'' () is a series of
novel
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...
s and novellas by
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany, the country of the Germans and German things
**Germania (Roman era)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
author
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass (; 16 October 1927 – 13 April 2015) was a German novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, sculptor, and recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature.
He was born in the Free City of Danzig (now Gda ...
. The trilogy focuses on the
interwar
In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period, also known as the interbellum (), lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days) – from the end of World War I (WWI) to the beginning of World War II ( ...
and
wartime period in the
Free City of Danzig
The Free City of Danzig (; ) was a city-state under the protection and oversight of the League of Nations between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland) and nearly 200 other small localities in the surrou ...
(now
Gdańsk
Gdańsk is a city on the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, Data for territorial unit 2261000. it is Poland's sixth-largest city and principal seaport. Gdań ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
).
The three books in the
trilogy
A trilogy is a set of three distinct works that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games. Three-part works that are considered components of ...
are:
*''
The Tin Drum
''The Tin Drum'' (, ) is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass, the first book of his Danzig Trilogy. It was adapted into a 1979 film, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980.
To "beat a ti ...
'' (''Die Blechtrommel''), published in 1959
*''
Cat and Mouse
Cat and mouse, often expressed as cat-and-mouse game, is an English-language idiom that means "a contrived action involving constant pursuit, near captures, and repeated escapes." The "cat" is unable to secure a definitive victory over the "mous ...
'' (''Katz und Maus''), published in 1961
*''
Dog Years'' (''Hundejahre''), published in 1963
John Reddick was the first person to explicitly identify the three books as a trilogy and to refer to it as the Danzig Trilogy.
German publisher Luchterhand re-issued the three novels under the overall heading ''Danziger Trilogie'' in 1980. In 1987,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Harcourt () was an American publishing firm with a long history of publishing fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. It was known at different stages in its history as Harcourt Brace, & Co. and Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. From 1919 to 1 ...
published the first US edition of the entire trilogy under this name.
The trilogy is sometimes seen as part of a larger pentology that includes the later works ''Der Butt'' (1977) and ''Die Rättin'' (1986). An alternative interpretation extends the trilogy to a sextet by the addition of ''Der Butt'', ''Unkenrufe'' (1992), and ''Im Krebsgang'' (2002). Publisher Steidl advertised these six books as ''Das Danzig-Sextett'' in 2006.
References
Novel series
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