Die Blechtrommel

Günter Grass’ novel "Die Blechtrommel" (The Tin Drum) arrived in post-war German literature like a spaceship from a faraway galaxy. Grass dissected five decades of German history with infinite imagination, sharp linguistic power, biting humour and incomparable descriptive fury, reconstructing a lost world and at the same time pointing the way to the abyss. Grass was rightly awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, four decades after the book's publication.

Since then, "Die Blechtrommel" has been adapted into many different formats: as a film, of course (1979, directed by the award-winning Volker Schlöndorff), and a number of stage versions. However, no one has ever come up with the (perhaps too obvious) idea of adding the element of drumming! The interplay between the text and the richly shimmering sounds of vibraphone, marimba, percussion and live electronics turns Grass's novel into a completely new discovery.