In approaching Grass as a poet and a dramatist, it is extremely difficult to forget that Grass has gained pre-eminent recognition as a novelist: in what follows I have not attempted to do so. Certainly the most immediate kind of interest that these works are likely to arouse for admirers of Grass's novels lies in the large number of parallels or anticipations of images and themes explored in the prose works. Standing by themselves, they would not have made Grass a significant contemporary writer—the body of lyric writing is too slender….

My own satisfaction in reading these works comes chiefly from the discovery of how closely Grass's work—even when it is at its most 'absurd'—reflects contemporary social and psychological realities. Political themes are apparent from the very start, and while the poems and plays, like the work in general, display a clear development in the...