The Story Archive

The Rat

Günter Grass · 1986 CE · Novel · German · Contemporary

A rat given as a Christmas present begins speaking to the dreamer from a space capsule, reporting the human record as a closed matter and the earth as rat country now. Four strands run beside her: Oskar Matzerath at sixty, a video producer motoring to Kashubia for his grandmother's hundred-and-seventh birthday; five women sounding the Baltic; a Lübeck fresco forger; and the Grimms' fairy-tale figures occupying a dying forest.

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