March 2002 - Nr. 3
Grass Novella Set to Take Germany by Storm
TWIG - A new novella by Nobel laureate Guenter Grass hit German bookstores Wednesday (February 6), and it already seems set to become the country’s next bestseller. Im Krebsgang (roughly, "Going Nowhere") chronicles the catastrophic fate of the Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship carrying German refugees that was sunk by a Russian submarine in the Baltic during World War II. A survey of booksellers conducted by the German Press Agency (dpa) suggests demand for the book has been building for some time.
The Thalia bookstore chain in Hamburg stocked more than 1,000 copies of the novella, and Duesseldorf’s largest bookstore was shipped several hundred. That number is much higher than is usual for a literary work, though not quite in the ranks of Harry Potter, an employee of the store explained, adding that she was "completely surprised by the intensity of demand." Roughly one out of three customers in the literature section of the Duesseldorf store on Tuesday asked about Grass, she said. Bookstores in Munich, Frankfurt, Cologne and Stuttgart were heavily stocked with the new title, and on Wednesday, Im Krebsgang was the number-one seller at Amazon.de. Grass’s publisher, Steidl Verlag, has already agreed to ten foreign-language translations.
The novella got a coveted thumbs up from Germany’s most influential literary critic, Marcel Reich-Ranicki, during the Tuesday premiere of Solo, a new television program on German arts and letters. The book critic publishers and authors fear most called Im Krebsgang "one of the best and most moving works Grass has written in his life, one of the best works German literature has had to offer in recent years." Reich-Ranicki does not dispense praise freely and was less than enthusiastic about Grass’s last publication, so his seal of approval is likely to carry all the more weight with prospective readers. "When a story moves me to tears," he concluded, "then, I say arrogantly, it is good, great literature."
Grass presents the disaster of the Wilhelm Gustloff as a symbol of Germany’s tragic fall. The ship was originally designed to carry passengers across the Atlantic on cruises. Swept up in the fascist dream of a classless society, it had identical cabins for everyone. Toward the end of World War II it became an emergency vessel, transporting wounded soldiers and civilians fleeing the invading Russian army. The Wilhelm Gustloff was hit by three Russian torpedoes shortly after leaving Gdingen (Gdynia) on January 30, 1945. More than 9,000 people died as it sank, and its wreckage still lies on the Baltic Sea floor.
