''The Box'' () is a 2008 fictionalised autobiography by the German writer

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 ...

. It has the subtitle "Tales from the Darkroom" ("Dunkelkammergeschichten"). In the narrative, the 80-year-old Grass' eight children, at their father's request, record conversations where they say what they think of him. ''The Box'' follows the writer's previous memoir book, ''

Peeling the Onion ''Peeling the Onion'' () is a 2006 autobiographical work by German Nobel Prize-winning author and playwright Günter Grass. It begins with the end of his childhood in Danzig (Gdansk) when the Second World War breaks out, and ends with the auth ...

'' from 2006, which ended in 1959 with the literary success of ''

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 ...

''. It was followed by ''Grimm's Words'' in 2010. Though written as if each child were presenting facts about their family's life, it was all written by Grass. The book's 194 pages were translated by Krishna Winston into English.

Reception

Miranda Seymour Miranda Jane Seymour (born 8 August 1948) is an English literary critic, novelist and biographer of Robert Graves, Mary Shelley and Jean Rhys among others. Seymour is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She elected to resign from the Royal S ...

of ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'' wrote that "''The Box'' is not a wholly successful work. Capricious Mariechen often proves irritatingly whimsical; the Grass children, their voices lapping in and out in a format that comes straight from

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer and one of the most influential 20th-century modernist authors. She helped to pioneer the use of stream of consciousness narration as a literary device. Vir ...

's ''

The Waves ''The Waves'' is a 1931 novel by English novelist Virginia Woolf. It is critically regarded as her most experimental work, consisting of ambiguous and cryptic soliloquies spoken mainly by six characters: Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Neville, Jinny an ...

'', lack individuality. I can remember their names only because I jotted them down; glancing back now at a random page of ''The Box'', I don’t know – or, frankly, care – whether I’m reading the words of Paulchen, Lena, Nana or Pat."

References

2008 German novels Novels by Günter Grass German autobiographical novels German-language novels {{2000s-bio-novel-stub

Reception

See also

References