Dog Years

Die Danziger Trilogie #3

by Günter Grass, Ralph Manheim (Translator)

A novel set in three parts, beginning in the 1920s and ending in the 1950s, that follows the lives of two friends from the prewar years in Germany through an apocalyptic period and its startling aftermath. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Genres: Fiction, German Literature, Germany, Classics, Nobel Prize, Literature, Novels

576 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

Novels, notably The Tin Drum (1959) and Dog Years (1963), of German writer Günter Wilhelm Grass, who won the Nobel Prize of 1999 for literature, concern the political and social climate of Germany during and after World War II.

This novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, and sculptor since 1945 lived in West Germany but in his fiction frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood. He always identified as a Kashubian.

He is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a key text in European magic realism. He named this style “broadened reality.” “Cat and Mouse” (1961) and Dog Years (1963) also succeeded in the period. These three novels make up his “Danzig trilogy.”

Helene Grass (née Knoff, 1898 - 1954), a Roman Catholic of Kashubian-Polish origin, bore Günter Grass to Willy Grass (1899 - 1979), a Protestant ethnic German. Parents reared Grass as a Catholic. The family lived in an apartment, attached to its grocery store in Danzig-Langfuhr (now Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz). He has one sister, born in 1930.

Grass attended the Danzig gymnasium Conradinum. He volunteered for submarine service with the Kriegsmarine "to get out of the confinement he felt as a teenager in his parents' house" which he considered - in a very negative way - civic Catholic lower middle class. In 1943 he became a Luftwaffenhelfer, then he was drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst, and in November 1944, shortly after his seventeenth birthday, into the Waffen-Schutzstaffel. The seventeen-year-old Grass saw combat with the 10th Schutzstaffel panzer division Frundsberg from February 1945 until he was wounded on 20 April 1945 and sent to an American prisoner of war camp.

In 1946 and 1947, he worked in a mine and received an education of a stonemason. For many years, he studied sculpture and graphics, first at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He also worked as an author and traveled frequently. He married in 1954 and from 1960 lived in Berlin as well as part-time in Schleswig-Holstein. Divorced in 1978, he remarried in 1979. From 1983 to 1986 he held the presidency of the Berlin Akademie der Künste (Berlin Academy of Arts).

During the German unification process in 1989 he argued for separation of the two states, because he thought a unified Germany would resume its past aggression. He moved to the northern German city of Lübeck in 1995. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. In 2006, Grass caused controversy with his disclosure of his Waffen-Schutzstaffel service during the final months of World War II, which he had kept a secret until publishing his memoir that year. He died of complications of lung infection on 13th of April, 2015 at a Lübeck hospital. He was 87.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dog Years is one of the most complex novels written in the twentieth century and one of the most powerful as well… Günter Grass is at the top of his creativity.

What does a river like the Vistula carry away with it? Everything that goes to pieces: wood, glass, pencils, pacts… chairs, bones, and sunsets too. What had long been forgotten rose to memory, floating on its back or stomach, with the help of the Vistula.

Memory is a river – friends and enemies, men and mannequins, people and monsters, rats and dogs, philosophers and villains, good and evil float by through the years…

“The rat can endure without the ratty, but never can there be rattiness without the rat.”

Dog Years is a magical warp of reality – reality is distorted and twisted and it is done not for purpose of deceiving but to make history and evil more grotesque and sinister, to make us see the nightmare of war and fascism in all its hideousness and filth.
“The scarecrow is created in man’s image…” But there are also some men that were created in scarecrow’s image.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finishing this monster novel, the sound I feel like uttering is a guttural, deep barking approval.

What a tour de force!

If I hadn't read his autobiographical Beim Häuten der Zwiebel very recently, I doubt I would have understood a word. But as it is, even the most confusing changes of scenes and characters make sense, as an artistic expression of the confusion and pain that the Second World War and the collapse of Germany caused Günter Grass' generation.

It is a twisted fairytale, and an epistolary love story, and a journey into the Underworld, and a mythological quest for revenge. It is a political satire, and a social study and a story of friendship and betrayal.

It is realistic and fantastic and vulgar and sophisticated.

It gives a lost generation an ugly yet eloquent voice, following the path from Führer worshipping children over a confused youth to a disillusioned adulthood full of guilt, shame and hatred that has to be hidden in order to survive - activity during the Wirtschaftswunder as an indirect form of therapy, and a way of hiding former selves. Those former selves were required by the state from 1933-1945, only to turn into dangerous liabilities after the war. All of a sudden, other aspects of identity have to be found, promoted and believed in.

Walter Matern, Harry Liebenau, Amsel/Haseloff, Tulla Pokriefke, Jenny Brunies - they all carry their bad timing of birth through life as a burden. Born into mayhem, they turn to drastic solutions to odd problems. And the dogs? They mirror their masters, just like their masters mirror them.

[Sawsan · Rating 3 out of 5]

آخر جزء من ثلاثية دانزج للكاتب الألماني جونتر جراس
رواية ضخمة, لها أكثر من راوي في 3 فصول وتتناول فترة طويلة ما قبل وبعد النازية
تبدأ بيوميات لاثنين من الصبية ابن الطحان وصديقه ابن التاجر وهو نصف يهودي
كل شيء عن صداقتهم وحياتهم وألعابهم والاختلافات بينهم
ثم تتغير الأحوال بتغير الأفكار والقناعات وظهور النازية, وبعدها الحرب العالمية الثانية واشتراك أحدهم فيها
وبعد الحرب والهزيمة تبدأ التحولات والمناقشات والاعتراف بالأخطاء
أما الكلاب فلها حضور كبير في الرواية وأهمهم الكلب الذي أهدته مدينة دانزج لهتلر
أجاد جراس التعبير عن أثر النازية والحرب على الألمان, وخياله فيه إبداع وسعة
لكن الرواية مُزدحمة بالأحداث والشخصيات والحكايات, وتفاصيل الطبيعة والمزارع والمناجم والحيوانات
قراءة طويلة لسرد مُتداخل, وفي المجمل فكرة الرواية مميزة وأسلوب جراس ناقد وساخر أحيانا

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last volume in the Danzig Trilogy is also the longest and most intricate. I felt I could feel the grimy mud between my toes on the banks of the bay near Gdansk where a lot of the action takes place. It is also another lens into the horrors of Hitler's Germany and a fantastic book. I'd recommend it after The Tin Drummer and Cat and Mouse and think you will not be disappointed.

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is AMAZING, so actually I ought to give it five stars. I have not done this because my rating must also mirror my personal appreciation of the book. The copious details are too many. In my view, Grass overdoes not only the details but also the message the book and the whole trilogy sets out to convey. It goes a step too far.

What is important to know when picking up this book and the others in the Danzig Trilogy ?

The three books should be read in the order listed below. The first and the third are long, the second short.

Grass has a prose style you come to recognize. Sections read as prose poetry. Sentences are long. Words are repeated. This gives the prose a rhythm. Poetry is often associated with pretty, lyrical content. Grass’ isn’t. Grit and grime and facts and philosophical meanderings take center stage. The cadence appeals to me. It is strong and powerful, but he pushes his message to the point where you don’t know any more what he is talking about. Time and time again, he returns to a given subject or theme and a little more becomes clear. This helps explain the book’s length.

The three books hold together. They are populated by the same characters. The different books focus on some characters more than others. The novels are works of historical fiction. They speak of Prussians and Germans, of life during the 1920s through the Second World War to the afterwar period of the 1950s. This book, even more so than the others, is chockful of facts. History and politics and culture. The mechanics of particular industries are covered in great length. There are pages and pages of details that are at times boring, unless you happen to be an expert in the field then being discussed. In that we return to given topics many times, the telling is not chronological. The characters’ ancestors are covered in large sweeps of time. These are difficult to relate to because they do not become personal.

The book speaks through metaphors. Symbolism is heavy. In this, the third book, the message is focused upon more than the characters. Grass speaks through satire. The humor is dark and cynical. It becomes clear that Grass’ philosophical leanings parallel the views of Martin Heidegger.

I listened to this translated into Swedish by Lars W. Freij. The Swedish narration is by Gunnar Johnson. Grass uses a smattering of different dialects, and he makes up his own words. Both the translation and the narration have had to be difficult. I think both were very well done. The words chosen felt like they fit. The narration I have given four stars. There are many cultural similarities between Germany and Sweden. Choosing a Swedish translation has proved to be a good choice.

I am glad to have read the entire trilogy, but I personally prefer the first two books because of their stronger focus on character portrayal. Also, that which is wonderful first and second time around loses its impact when repeated again and again. The amount of information is prodigious. The writing style in the books of the trilogy is unique and special. It may be viewed as a work of art. The trilogy’s criticism of the Nazi regime is impressive. The trilogy is a valuable and important literary work.

Günter Grass (1927-2015) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.

*****************************

The Danzig Trilogy :
*The Tin Drum 5 stars
*Cat and Mouse 5 stars
*Dog Years 3 stars

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dog Years was mind-bendingly great. We are all scarecrows.

Two boys and a dog are on the banks of a river, watching debris stream by--furniture, uniforms from past wars, clothing from other eras, the carcasses of cats and farm animals. In other words, German history.

The two friends are Walter Matern and Eduard Amsel, who is not-so-secretly half-Jewish. Eddi is an artist and a thinker; Matern is the physical one, acting as his bodyguard. Together with a gang of friends, he was happily beating the overweight Eddi in the schoolyard, when for no reason he could understand, he suddenly switched sides.

The two boys are inseparable, growing up in the flat farmland near the Vistula. One day, little Amsel discovers that he's an artist; he makes scarecrows out of sticks and pipes and discarded clothing, miraculous scarecrows that do an unnaturally good job of scaring crows away. Everyone wants one. But over time, the scarecrows come to resemble people Amsel knows, culminating in a fearsome bird monster. (This made me think Grass must have read Bruno Schulz.) The townspeople turn on him, making him destroy his collection and his studio, forcing him to leave town.

Later in the novel, when Hitler is firmly in control of Germany, Amsel, now a young man, smiles and tries eagerly to fit in. In the novel's most chilling scene, Matern, seduced by the deadly tribal brotherhood of the brown-shirted Storm Troopers, leads a brutal attack on his oldest friend, viciously smashing every one of his teeth. A changed Eddi Amsel rises from the earth, packs a suitcase and slips away into the night.

The second section of the novel is written as a series of letters from the morally ambivalent everyman Harry Liebenau to his beloved cousin Tula, detailing their childhood, his experiences as a soldier, and the history and pedigree of the German Shepherd Prinz, Hitler's favorite dog. The final part of the narrative belongs to a repentant Walter, with a hilariously vengeful tour through postwar Germany, eventually bringing him back together with his old friend Amsel.

I don't have the words to properly laud this immensely powerful book. It’s a distillation of poetic wordplay, human nature, philosophy, myth and history. It is, by turns, gentle, witty, wise, unforgiving, sorrowing, terrifying, compassionate, critical, pornographic, scatalogical, and savagely funny. Dog Years is a masterpiece of German literature, a deep, long, broad exploration of that terrible time in history when millions of ordinary people, all together, took leave of their senses--a book that manages to be an apology, a celebration and a warning.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dog Years is the third book in Grass’ Danzig trilogy (the Danzig in question is the town on the border of Germany and Poland; people looking for the heavy metal band won’t find them here).

I really enjoyed the first two books in this trilogy and gave them both 4 stars. Their poetic, almost abstract in places, prose was a joy to read and the subject matter was fascinating. I was initially attracted to these books for the magical realism aspect but actually found, on reading them, that I could actually take it or leave it; it was the writing, the characters and the scenarios I found most compelling.

Sadly, with this final instalment, despite having much in common with its predecessors, I found myself less engaged. The characters were still interesting, the setting just as compelling, starting in the interbellum, going right through WWII and for about fifteen years of the post-war period, but the author took the abstraction too far with this one for my tastes.

In the first two books, the somewhat recondite nature of the prose was one of the attractions, but in Dog Days Grass pushes it so far it ends up feeling like obfuscation for obfuscation’s sake in many places. I’m not the sort of reader who needs everything spelled out for them, wrapped up in a little bow, but this book definitely took too many steps away from clarity for me. There were also far too many unfinished sentences; I appreciated the effect at first but after four hundred pages it started to drive me mad.

Don’t get me wrong; I still liked it, hence 3 stars and no lower, but it was definitely my least favourite of the trilogy. It won’t stop me reading more Grass in the future, though.

[shizuku · Rating 4 out of 5]

خب اول از همه‌ بگم این کتاب به کتاب سخت خوان هست،پس اگه وقت کافی ندارید و یه کتاب ساده دوست دارید بخونید،این کتاب بر��ی شما مناسب نیست ،چون خوندنش نیاز به دقت و زمان داره،

سال های سگ کتابی در مورد آلمان قبل،درطول و بعد از جنگ جهانی دوم هست ،نویسنده در مورد زادگاه خودش یعنی شهر دانزینگ لهستان صحبت میکنه و اهمیتی که براش داره ،همونجوری که دوبلین برای جیمز جویس و ریوکناپاتاوفا برای فاکنر اهمیت داشت .

کتاب هم از نظر فرم هم سبک و هم محتوا یک کتاب دشواره ،خودم به صفحه۲۰۰ که رسیدم میخواستم بزارمش کنار چون اصلا ارتباط برقرار نمیکردم اما بعدش جادو اتفاق افتاد و توی بخش دوم عاشقش شدم،تعداد شخصیت ها خیلی خیلی زیاده و واقعا سخت ترین کتابی بود که خوندم تابه حال،هوف....

کتاب از سه تا بخش تشکیل شده ،بخش اول به نام شیفت های صبحگاهی توسط هر براکسل،رئیس معدن روایت میشه که قصه دوتا دوست به نام والتر ماترن و ادی آمزل رو میگه ،روایت در مورد خانواده ها و دوستی این دونفر و نقش پر رنگ سگی میگه که یکی از توله هاش به پدر راوی فصل دوم فروخته میشه«یعنی پسر نجار»،هری لیبانو «پسر نجار» در فصل دوم یعنی "عاشقانه ها" راوی هست،و فصل دوم درمورد رابطه دوستانه بین ادی آمزل ،ماترن،هری لیبانو و دخترداییش تولا هست و ینی دخترخونده معلمشون و ما در واقع نامه های هری به تولا رو میخونیم،و فصل سوم به نام ماترانه ها ،از زبان والتر ماترن روایت میشه که در پی انتقام از جنایت کاران جنگی نازی هست،دانستن راوی ها خیلی بهتون کمک میکنه که درک بهتری از داستان داشته باشید و متوجه باشید داستان داره چه جوری اتفاق می افته،
فصل اول هنوز جنگ شروع نشده و از اواسط فصل دوم اتفاقات جنگ جهانی دوم شروع میشه و فصل سوم هم ماترن به دنبال انتقام بعد از جنگ هست،

داستان در مورد این کودکان گفته میشه و اینکه جنگ چه جوری زندگیشون رو تحت تاثیر خودش قرار میده ،فصل آخر وقتی ماترن به دنبال انتقام جنگی میاد ما میبینیم که بیشتر مردم دلشون میخواد خاطرات جنگ رو فراموش کنن،و عینکی ساخته و به بازار میاد که با اون بچه ها میتونن جنایت های جنگی پدرها و حتی سگی که همراه ماترن بوده رو ببینن ،و این باعث میشه خیلی از کودکان در بیمارستان های روانی بستری بشن،و این نشون میده که خیلی از چیزها قابل فراموش شدن نیست،و صدمات جنگ ادامه دار هست و ما میبینم که چه جوری زندگی بچه ها تحت تاثیر جنگ قرار میگیره،ادی آمزل مترسک ساز مجبور به تغییر اسم و فرار میشه «چقدر شخصیت ادی آمزل و مترسک ساختنش رو دوست داشتم،نویسنده واقعا یه شخصیت فراموش نشدنی و خاص ساخته،همانندش رو توی هیچ کتابی ندیدم»،وقتی بمب ها روی سالنی که ینی بالرین اجرا داشته فرود میاد، و وقتی تولا هری رو مجبور پول بلیط قطار خودش رو پرداخت کنه در حالی که هری راهی جنگ بوده، و ماترن که تئاتر و بازی فوتبال تبدیل به خاطراتش میشن و بعد از جنگ میبینیم که ماترن دیگه نمیتونه مثل قبل فوتبال بازی کنه و جنگ چیزهای زیادی رو ازش گرفته،شخصیت ماترن و دندون قروچه هاش رو خیلی دوست داشتم ،خاص بودن شخصیت ها عالی بود،شخصیت تولا هم خیلی خاص بود،اون حسادت ها،زندگی کردن توی لونه سگ ،اون میل بیش از حدش به داشتن یک بچه ،همه چیز شخصیت های این کتاب خاص و عالی بود،وقتی که مادربزرگ ماترن از روی ویلچر بلند شد و شباهتش به ماترن از لحاظ دندون قروچه کردن ،شخصیت خواهر ماترن همه چیز واقعا عالی بود،حرف زدن آسیابان با کرم های توی گونی و نمادین شدن این حرف زدن ها و شکل سیاسی گرفتنش توی فصل آخر همه چیز واقعا فوق العاده و در عین حال پیچیده بود، اینجوری نیست که وقتی داری میخونیش خیلی لذت ببری، البته که لذت میبری ولی کتاب سخت خوانی هست ،اما وقتی تمومش کردی و گذاشتی کتاب توی ذهنت ته نشین بشه تازه متوجه میشی که چه شاهکاری خوندی...
یه جاهایی واقعا گیج میشدم که چه اتفاقی داره می افته یا معنی این حرف چیه🤦اما از فصل دوم دیگه نمیشه کتاب رو کنار گذاشت،اگه این کتاب رو میخونید با دقت و زمان کافی داشتن و استمرار بخونید.⁦ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ⁩

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't read this book for a while now, but I have read it over and over. I had to put it on the list because it's my favorite book of all time and this seems like a logical place to say so. When Dog Years gets talked about it is generally said to be a lesser creation than The Tin Drum, which is kind of a companion. Actually the two are part of Grass's Danzig trilogy, which also includes Cat and Mouse. Anyway, I've always felt the critics didn't understand the most important thing about Dog Years, which is that it has an amazing underlying form that acts as a simultaneous interpretation of the events it relates. The story is about two boys, a Jew and a gentile, who become friends in the years leading up to WWII, and what happens to their friendship when the war intervenes. But the underlying form is about how the war was the end of time for Germany; everything that happens after the war in Grass's book is a retrograde of what happened before, as though the war eliminated the future and the only choice besides dying completely was for the whole nation to turn around and go back. So even though the narrative time continues forward, all the events after the war have their corresponding events in the beginning of the book. By the end of the book there's a scene where the two boys, now much older, are soaking in bathtubs in adjoining rooms, as though time had gone back past their births and put them back in their separate wombs so they would have another chance to make better choices in their lives. That's the most inventive strategy for drawing conclusions about a story that I've ever seen. Obviously, I recommend Dog Years highly.

[Manisha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I miss the brilliance that was The Tin Drum

Dog Years was a difficult read. It was dense, it was slow-moving, and by the end of it, I felt a sense of accomplishment and relief, and yet, I cannot for the life of me tell you what this book is really about.

I could appreciate what Grass was focusing on, which was the aftermath of the war in Germany. However, as someone who knows precious little about that period, I didn’t understand most of the story. I believe this book was written for those who know the history of Germany, because I felt like I missed something from the beginning and I never understood what I missed by the end of the book. The references went over my head, as they weren’t referenced more than once (in some instances), or because they referenced something else that I didn’t understand.

Hence, if you know the history of Post-War Germany, you would probably enjoy this book more than me. Unlike his previous books where Grass took the time to explain what life was like in Germany during the war, Dog Years didn’t take the time to explain what life was like after this horrible period of history.

I could understand some aspects of it due to a personal experience. I only wish I understood the references.

[Kalkwiese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Günter Grass entfesselt seine stilistische und peotische Begabung vollends und schreibt einen Roman, der allein schon weil er überhaupt funktioniert und stimmig ist, großen Respekt verdient. Sein technisches Meisterwerk lässt Zeit- und Erzählebenen flüssig ineinander übergehen und nimmt alle Ideen aus Die Blechtrommel und Katz und Maus und holt aus ihnen wohl auch das letzte Bisschen heraus.
Dennoch bleibt Die Blechtrommel das packendere und damit für mich bessere Buch; es gibt einen besseren Zugang zu den Figuren, ihrer Psyche und ist allgemein einfacher zugänglich.
Hundejahre ist faszinierend geschrieben mit interessanten Ideen und Konzepten, liest sich stellenweise aber auch eher mäßig spannend. Hier hat mich Grass vir allem als Sprachkünstler bei der Stange gehalten.
Die Blechtrommel - und den Vergleich muss sich Hundejahre als Teil der Danziger Trilogie gefallen lassen - konnte für mich auf allen Ebenen Punkten. Am Ende ist es also den Hundejahren ein Stückchen voraus.
Dennoch, als ich Hundejahre beendet habe, war ich für zwei Tage buchverkatert. Was für ein Ritt! Was für eine Spannweite der literarischen Formen und Figuren! Ich hätte ohne ein paar der Bewusstseinsstrompassagen auskommen können, bei denen ich wirklich nicht mehr wusste, was los war, aber ansonsten ist meine Vorfreude auf Der Butt, der als Grass zweitbedeutendstes Werk gilt, sehr gewachsen.

[Andrew]

I finished reading Dog Years just as I heard about the mysterious mass die-off in the River Oder, and all I could think as I read was Grass' voice muttering about dead fishes and the stench of river water and the ghosts of the bloodied borderlands of Eastern Europe...

The Tin Drum is an approachable novel. Complex, yes, and experimental, but really a very easy story to love. Dog Years is far denser and more difficult, something that you can imagine (stateside) a Gass or a Vollmann dreaming up. The story progresses from the aftermath of Versailles to the aftermath of Dresden and beyond, boys and dogs and abject horror of all flavors. I'm baffled, but I'm very impressed, and the sickly images haunt me. Reread at a later date.

[Subject Predicate · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can a whelp like myself tell about Dog Years, read barely an hour ago, in Ralph Manheim's English translation?

I can't tell you anything, for I have a bad memory and my conscience is flooding over. I can only try and channel my impression of this book with whatever vividness I can muster.

So, the Dog Years.
It is not just a quirkily contrived novel about the German and the Jew, or a painful, touching journey into the worse half of the maddest century, or the third book in the Danzig trilogy by G. Grass the Nobel Prize winner, of The Tin Drum fame.

It is not just a novel, it is as much a novel as it is a musical instrument, and a riddle to solve, a jigsaw puzzle of references both insidious and outsidious, with leitmotives and murder motives as resounding musical strings throughout the novel's length.

One must confess, though, that it is indeed first and foremost a quirky novel with a plot which is not only non-linear, but curvilinear, with different points of the curve tied by those resounding strings of divers colours: in the most unexpected places you shall see the familiar syntax of a hundred pages ago, you shall see a seemingly random phrase spring up here and there like a skipping pebble thrown on the river's surface by a kid.

I revelled in solving this puzzle like one would solve a Rubik's cube, in figuring out what exactly the "dog years" mean, and why is the number thirty two everywhere, and why the scarecrows and the twelve headless nuns.

But that's only a part of the picture, not all. It's not simply about enjoyment or historical and literary allusions galore. I don't want to see and hear all these strings plucked simply for the sake of plucking. Technique, when lifeless, reeks of vacuity.

It's the same as with music. There is rhythm, which one enjoys and
then there is melody, which one feels resounding in one's own heart and without which the rhythm nigh loses its purpose.
So it is with this book.

The leitmotives are the strings for your own hand to touch and pluck. The depth is immense, the melody is echoing, the jest is infinite, the sadness is infinite, the world is within grasp, grasped by the author, nourished by the author, held out to us.

Go no further. Read this book. I can never convince you enough. I can only channel my impression, which I did.

Nevermind my nonsense. Read. "Every joy is the last".

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

My reading of Dog Years haunts me. It was a crossroads time and the absorbtion is steeped in a peculiar melancholy, about the moves about to undertaken. I'm sure a great measure of this projection, some psychic empathy with the protagonist. Neurological jury-rigging is inevitable; it does help to recognize the patterns and the places of origin. One is no less haunted, I'm afraid.

[Lorenzo Berardi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arf...whoof...I did it!
But it wasn't that easy.

Now I feel like the dog printed in the front cover of this book and drawn by Grass himself. A dog with its tongue out after a long run all through unknown narrative woods.
Just like "Prinz" did, escaping from his famous black moustached owner in the siege of Berlin crossing river Elbe somehow.

Well, despite of its quick appearance "Prinz" the dog is the main character of this book standing as a symbol of quite many things:
freedom, stubborness, human stupidity, struggle of life, disobedience.

Those were the Dog Years. This book talks about them.
The novel is good and interesting, but technically is not a novel.
There are amazing and enjoyable parts as well as heavy and obscure paragraphs. You could look at the style used by Grass gere as a German way of the "stream of consciousness".
You won't find any Leopold Bloom here, though. But at least there is some brilliant irony.

"Dog Years" is undeniably a rather chaotic book, accumulating symbolism, historic references, peculiar ways of speaking and grotesque characters. And yet this novel was very stimulating way for my poor little brains albeit I would have preferred a clearer distinction among the different characters in this very original frame.
But, hey! We're talking about Guenter Grass, after all...

Anyway.
I confess how I skipped over many pages of this novel. It was necessary.
Besides, my Italian edition was printed in a very bad way, making the reading process strenuous and uneasy after page 80 (I had to bend the whole book for being able to read the end of each sentence on the even pages).

For those who are not prepared enough, I warn you:
this novel will probably make you stoned, but still is a goldmine of useful informations about life in that thin German/Polish line before the blast of World War II.
Just read it with a strong preliminary K-ration of patience and your tail will have its dance.

[K.C. · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a dogged reading. Looks if nothing is going to happen. None of the character talks with himself to bring out any kind of insight. There is a parasitic dependence on the things without to have any movement in the story. It at times is a dog thinking and reasoning like a man and the other way for a man. What is the point if it is as uncertain and as non-starter as it appears, if not a sudden quirk or a twist in the story occurs, which makes it worth to continue?
Before you reach the middle of the book Gunter Grass begins to overwhelm with the brilliant way he uncovers the distress and consequences of the war under Hitler in the country. An elderly school teacher, a neighbor of the narrator Harry, who taught literature and writing methods, often by leaving them alone, to his students, besides other subjects, disappears for his crime of failing to celebrate the birthday of Hitler. He was charged with eating the candies the school administration has allocated for his students.
The cousin of the Harry named Tulla, who he fingers at times beside the daughter of the disappeared school teacher, Jenny, to check the depth of their holes–as he puts it, speculates that the teacher has been taken to a place from where a heap of freshly collected human bones have been dumped in open in their town, which foul the air of it all the time and attract a large number of rats and crows. Tulla brings a human skull from there to prove her point.
Sex scenes, more often than not, by Gunter Grass, are not the tenderest and delicate type. They are vicious, crude and occur like an act of sabotage. Taking a reader by complete surprise, besides the characters performing it. Similar can be said about the writing style. It makes things obscure in the way they are described in a convoluted language which often is difficult to get hold of. By keeping the going on a scene surprises by its sudden arrival, for it is shocking not only for what it is but also for the lucid and forth-coming language in which it is described.
One hopes the original German language edition reads better than its translation. Also that, a better translated version comes soon in English, which also cares about readability as well. For the subject is the most deadly war one has known; written by someone who fought it as well. Little other literature is available on this subject otherwise–from the side which lost it.
Tulla takes Harry and Jenny to a leech infested area and makes them attach leeches to their bodies and feed them till they are fully fed on their blood and become easily detachable. Then she collects those leeches and cooks them in a tin pot till they become a thick paste, then she eats it and asks them to eat it as well. Tulla thinks this is how her brother, somewhere fighting in France, might survive the war. But he is killed soon. In their early teens, these three characters try strange things to deal with the effect the war has created in their lives.
When, after his disappearance, the school teacher’s daughter is taken away by a middle-aged dance master and a probable Nazi official, who wants to keep her as a mistress while she learns dance in Berlin, she comes to knock at the door of Harry’s to say her goodbye. Harry and his parents do not open the door. But She and Harry continue to write each other till a long time later.
A Poignant and heart-breaking scene is when Harry, now inducted finally into the army at the age of sixteen, comes to say goodbye to Tulla, who is pregnant now at the same age by a person she never discloses. She is now working as a bus conductor to support herself. She wanted Harry to make her pregnant but he always declined this possibility. She offers him bundles of ticket as a souvenir with which he plays-with his fingers, just like a child.
It makes Tulla laugh. How the war was sucking in and destroying the lives of young children fills one with a profound sadness. A while ago, a bomb drops at a place where Jenny was performing and both her toes were amputated to end her dancing career. But the war was to last another three years. Tulla asks Harry to pay the bus fare for the distance he traveled with his modest luggage, before he leaves to join his duty in a war turning increasingly bloody.
The third and the last part of the novel deals with post war years in the country. Grass deals with so many trends in a desultory manner in the beginning. He picks technology, economy, politics and much more randomly and in an arcane language, without making any point clearly.
But soon he picks the people trying to practice a conscious collective amnesia to forget the bad memories of the war. But then a glass comes to the market for children of ten years of age, a time since the war has ended, which makes them see the past of their parents clearly. They see all the murders and other crimes which their parents have committed but never discussed. It leads to an epidemic of psychiatric diseases in the children using those glasses and many of them commit suicide.
But, some how, behind the religion, liberalism and progress, the society tries to hide from its past. The author sarcastically deals with the hypocrisy of the society to collectively forget a criminal past. It shows how neatly and effectively the author is capable of dealing with the things he really feels are important before he goes absent-minded again and talks about so many generalities in a language which is difficult to decipher.
In a way he expiates alone for the scores of unacknowledged sins committed by the society he belongs to. There are not many writers courageous enough to take up such a thankless task, though many other countries have perpetrated no less horrendous crimes on mankind than the Nazi violence.
On the contrary, all the efforts in literature mostly have been to make that past obscure enough, so that any future inquiry is preempted. In it not only the writers from the side of the perpetrators, but also a few from the victims' side, too have contributed.
It makes one’s heart bleed for the pathos of the writer of this novel.

[Martina Keller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whew! After finishing this book, I feel like what it must feel like when someone summits Mt. Everest -- an extremely difficult journey but a strong sense of accomplishment in the end. This is my 4th Günter Grass book, and by far, the most challenging to read. On many different levels I feel that this is not a book intended for any audience other than a post-war German one. Without knowing the intricate details of post-war German political and social history, some of the material is simply unreachable. For those of us outside of Germany who know a little bit about the pre- and post war times through family and other literature, the book does offer that uniquely unfiltered perspective of the German collective psyche that only Grass can offer the English speaking reader. There is within these pages an actual story, though it is sometimes hard to find amidst the mountains of stream-of consciousness ala Joyce and other poetic conventions going on. In fact, the story is at times a compelling one. I found myself wondering what this book could have been if it had been told by a more direct storytelling voice - such as that of John Irving. In the end, it is not a book I would recommend to the average American reader.

[Hendrik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dieses Buch gehörte lange zu den Staubfängern in meinem Bücheregal. Vor etlichen Jahren angelesen, doch bin ich letzlich nie über Seite 20 hinausgekommen. Aber jedes Buch braucht wohl die richtige Zeit um gelesen zu werden. Jedenfalls hat es mich diesmal von der ersten Seite an gepackt. Der Ideenreichtum und die Fabulierlust in "Hundejahre" zeigt, welch exzellenter Erzähler Günther Grass gewesen ist.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

SOAP IMPRESSION:
The second best of the Danzig three, with number 2 being number 1, one number 3. Gräss loses his way, as well as his fucking mind, by the Third Act, but the first few hundred pages (300ish?) are so, so beautiful. Come for the dogs, stay for the scarecrows in SA uniform—these scarecrows might just eat that goddamn crow rather than be contended w menacing it.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A clever, overly long, quirky, satirical, absurdist novel spanning the years of Germany, before, during and after World War II, highlighting the distress and consequences of the war under Hitler. The novel follows two childhood friends. Walter Matern, an Aryan and a Catholic, and Eddi Amstel, a half Jew. There are also many side stories. The bond between Matern and Amstel is tested with the rise of Nazism, with Walter becoming involved in the Nazi regime and Eddi, an artist, facing persecution.

This novel is a tough read with little plot momentum, unlike the author’s ‘The Tin Drum’ (1959). A thought provoking read with many very well written sentences. Here is an example of the author’s writing style:

“No idea stays pure. Even the flowering of art isn’t pure. And the sun has spots. All geniuses menstruate. On sorrow floats laughter. In the heart of roaring lurks silence.

This book was first published in German in 1963.

[Markus Amadeus Cosma]

SPONTANE IMPULSE [fortlaufender Posten]:

Dieses Buch muss ich (im Sinne strikter epistemischer Rezipienten-Gewissenhaftigkeit) noch einmal lesen, um wirklich etwas Gehaltvolles dazu sagen zu können... Sprachkunst ist fraglos, ja unzweifelhaft gegeben, aber mit dem Aspekt und der entsprechenden Gewichtung des erzählkünstlerischen Teils bin ich mir nicht ganz sicher, müsste verklausulierte Intellektualisierungen im Deutschunterrichtsstil bemühen... Was aber bedauerlicherweise nicht "mein" Stil ist... 😉 Vorläufige Stellungnahme: das Buch ist der geistigen Beschäftigung wert! O ja.

[Marko Čibej · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grass got me with his first sentence and didn't let go until the last. Surprising, you may say, for a book that spends the first hundred or so pages tracing the flight of a pocket-knife that a boy throws into the river. Surprising, for a book that spends long paragraphs enumerating the different ways his friend spells his name. Astonishing, for a book that spends chapters listing the flotsam carried along by the river Vistula.

Ah, but what the Vistula carries along! Chairs, scarecrows, human lives and, on a good day, most of European history. It must have been a good day when Gunther Grass sat on its banks to write this book.

No, I do understand those reviewers who did not like it. It's repetitive, tangled, repetitive, obscure and it is repetitive-Philip Glass comes to mind. But frankly, if you can watch Tulla crawl out of the kennel without reaching for a stiff drink, check your pulse.

[carl theaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I liked Gunter, majored in German, for awhile, loved the Tin Drum,
it took me a few starts to get going on this one. Couldn't get going, kept
it on the dresser as a duty to the Fatherland and finally read it and
yes liked it much. From the salty marshlands of eastern Germany from
long ago, to the post WW2 era, an epic tale of infinite detail.

[Mira میرا · Rating 4 out of 5]

فضاي رمان "سالهاي سگ"، پيش و پس جنگ جهاني دوم در آلمان است..طبق معمول بيشترين چيزي كه اذيتم مي كرد بالا و پايين هاي امر خطير ترجمه بود اما تم اصلي كتاب را دوست داشتم. مخصوصاً كه حيوانات نقش پر رنگي در آن دارند و از فلسفه هم_البته بيشتر مارتين هايدگر به سخره گرفته مي شود و متهم است_ ردي هست..
اگر مي توانيد در اين روزگار كتاب هاي قطور بخوانيد و مثل من لذت هم مي بريد، پيشنهاد مي شود.

[MaramBakri · Rating 3 out of 5]

عمل مركب غرائبي ينشغل بالفترة النازية به الكثير من ألاعيب اللغة ،شحنة غضب هائلة وحقنة توتر .. الحقيقة لم استمتع به

[David Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually - I'm not finished. Life is too short - I find this book completely uninteresting. This is only the third time I have given up on a book before reaching the end.

[Trinity Benstock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant. Altogether better written than Die Blechtrommel, especially in its pacing.

Danzig trilogy review:
Tin drum> Dog Years >> Cat and Mouses

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

First: If you decide to tackle the Danzig Trilogy, Reddick's critical analysis is indispensable. I suggest tackling it the same way I did: read The Tin Drum, start Reddick's book at the same time you start Cat and Mouse (Reddick reads faster than Grass, and you'll get through a lot of Reddick while tackling Grass), and when you've caught up, read Reddick's section on Dog Years and the actual novel concurrently.

Those of you who feel the revelation of anything having to do with a book before you get to that part in the book is a spoiler should probably avoid this technique; Reddick revelas the major "mystery" in Dog Years towards the end of his section on Cat and Mouse. However, one cannot really consider Dog Years a mystery, despite the various things that happen within it; while there are some elements to it that keep the reader guessing, Dog Years is, more than anything, a savage satire on Germany during the WW2 years. And as such, finding out the main mystery-that's-not-a-mystery should not detract at all from one's appreciation of the book itself.

Dog Years can also stand on its own, without being read as a part of the Danzig Trilogy, but the reader's appreciation of many facets of this novel-- most notably Edouard Amsel's character and the satire itself-- are more easily appreciated when you have The Tin Drum and Cat and Mouse under your belt as comparisons. Amsel, the main protagonist of Dog Years, stands as a direct comparison to both Oskar and Mahlke, and his character is more easily understood when those two have already been assimilated by the reader.

The plot of Dog Years is a simple enough one; it charts, through the use of three narrators, the frindship of Edouard Amsel and Walter Matern from grade school through their early thirties. Amsel, the intellectual one, is picked on constantly by his classmates (including Matern) until one day, for no apparent reason, Matern befriends Amsel and chases away the others. It's a typical buddy-relationship in that Amsel is the brains and Matern is the brawn, but we don't get the bonding we've come to expect from seeing too many Hollywood buddy films. The relationship between Matern and Amsel is far more complex than that, and Reddick has done a passable job of interpreting it, one which I won't attempt to recreate here (it would be ludicrous to attempt something that complex in such a forum as a review). In an odd lapse, though-- especially given how much emphasis Reddick has put on Grass' enmity and stire of the Roman Catholic Church in the previous two books-- Reddick seems to have overlooked one of the most obvious interpretations of Amsel's character (and also that of the more minor protagonist Jenny Brunies), as a christ figure. In the novel's central scene, both Amsel and Brunies (who are both made out, in the first half of the novel, to be almost comically fat) undergo a transformation that transforms Brunies into a ballet sensation and Amsel into another character entirely, the omnipotent Goldmouth; while there is no physical crucifixion here, the path taken by Amsel's character through the rest of the novel certainly implies the path of christ after the resurrection, until his assumption into, in this case, Berlin. For the next hundred or so pages, Goldmouth is never actually seen, only referred to in the good deeds he does for others, and he achieves an almost legendary status among the rank and file for his goodness, his power (in postwar germany, his power is in his connections; who he knows), and the fact that no one really sees him much, but everyone is aware of his presence and his acts. However, Reddick, in his attempt to (successfully) parallel Amsel's character with that of Grass himself, never examines this aspect of Amsel.

This lack also leads to Reddick drawing the conclusion that Dog Years is the weakest of the three books, while still proclaiming that as a whole they rank as the finest piece of modern German literature extant today. I feel Reddick is giving Dog Years short shrift here; while the book does, in fact, have its faults, they are faults shared by the other two novels as well, and I came away from Dog Years thinking that, to the contrary, it was the strongest and most absorbing of the three. While it was more difficult than the other two, it was also more rewarding and more absorbing; it's not often I'll put in three months on one novel, but at no time did I feel that it ever stopped moving me along, and at no time did I ever feel that it was time to put the book down for good.

Keeping this seeming oversight of Reddick's in mind, I still have to recommend his book as a perfect accompaniment to Grass' most famous three novels, and all four of them deserve the attention of every serious student of literature.

[Mohamed Karaly · Rating 4 out of 5]

إيقاع غنائى تتمثل غنائيته فى هوس بتكرار شريط الأحداث، وقفه، إعادة تدويره، تثبيث مشاهد بعينها عبر سيال متدفق من التفاصيل. حركة يد ، وضع رأس بشرية أو كلبية من خلال مشهد أكبر عامر بالآفاق والألوان والخيوط..أغنية عالقة تجتر تنويعات على ألم بشرى أو ذكرى لذيذة أو رائحة غرائية مثيرة من خبرة محلية مغلقة على فقر وعرى وبدائية ريفية، أساطير مختمرة وهوس فنى بدقة نظر وتفنن فى صنع فزاعات طيور وهوس شاعرى بأوصاف سلالات الكلاب والاستغراق فى كل تفصيلة فى أجسادها. ألمانيا قبل الحرب. المانيا الغنائية، والغناء اللامعقول المصاحب لحماس النازية. المانيا حيث الفلسفة المثالية ومع ذلك تتورط فى حرب بلا أى معنى تحرق فيها كل شىء وتتفنن فى القتل والهدم، والغناء يبرر، والألمان يواظبون بحماس غنائى ثمل ومجنون على التمثيل الدرامى ورقص الباليه والفلسفة. بعد الحرب يتابع الألمان حياتهم كأن شيئا لم يكن، سيالين مع تيار لعبة لا تنتهى، أدوار فى مسرحية، وفى النهاية كابوس من باطن الأرض يصنعه البطل الفنان المهووس بصنع فزاعات الطيور : مجتمع كامل من فزاعات تمارس كل الانشطة البشرية بإتقان وآلية. الغناء فى النهاية يُصفّى من روحه. ويقف كلب الجحيم الأسود "بلوتو" آخر كلاب السلالة ليحرس هذا الجحيم الذى تم إعداده تحت الأرض، بعد أن تم اقتياده وعزله عن الحياة فوق سطح الارض، وكان كلبا عجوزا فُرّغ هو كذلك من روحه واستسلم لغنائية وصخب فزاعات ميتة .. نهاية اللعبة .. يخرج البطلان من باطن الأرض ويعاودان التنفس، يتخلصان من ملابس المنجم ويستحمان، كل مع نفسه، بغير كلب
يريد جراس أن يكتب، كما عبر أحد ساردى الرواية، والذى تشكل وعيه برقص الباليه من خلال "كلمات" نقدية بعينها تقفز على سطور متخيله مع حركات حذاء الراقصة الفضى اللامع، وهو أن يكتب كيفما يحدث هذا : أى كيفما تتحرك راقصة الباليه. ولكن هل حقق هذا؟. إنه شىء مستحيل ومحاولة تحقيقه معلقة ومحمومة سيالة لمئات من صفحات طويلة لا تنتهى

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A boy throws a penknife into the Vistula, grinding his teeth. Scarecrows dot the landscape, throwing villagers into a superstitious fear. A chubby orphan girl is rolled into a snowman, and emerges a slender ballerina; a fat youth is attacked by brownshirts, loses his teeth, and is given his own transformative snowman. Dogs -- perfect black German shepherds -- sire dogs sire dogs which are given to Hitler, then find their way away from the fall of Berlin to a knife-throwing boy turned Nazi turned drunk turned bitter avenger of the most banal Nazi crimes.

Surreal, the horrors of midcentury Germany made real. Difficult to read, and even more difficult to put down. Brilliant.