Critical Praise

"What was it we lived through? What happened? Forty years of reimagining recent German history [has brought] Grass to these questions. And to the uncertain and interesting voice of his latest narrator, who [here describes] an unparalleled sea disaster he was present at but unaware of, because his mother was giving birth to him. A metaphor fabricated and ironic, Crabwalk takes us not only back into the Hitler years but also into depths of the present, which are Grass's real story."

——The Washington Post

"In a novel that has already attracted attention on both sides of the Atlantic, Nobelist Grass employs a compelling vehicle for his latest excursion into Germany's tortured past . . . This is one of Grass's most accessible novels, and the closing chapters about the rescue of [the narrator's] mother are simply riveting . . . A writer who refuses to avert his eyes from unpleasant truths, [Grass] remains an eloquent explorer of his country's troubled 20th-century history."

——Publishers Weekly

"Grass is lucid, sardonic, and unsparing as always."

——Kirkus Reviews

"This work hovers in that realm between fact and fiction . . . [Shines] a revealing light on German society, east and west, since the war."

——Library Journal