The Flounder

It all begins in the Stone Age, when a talking fish is caught by a fisherman at the very spot where millennia later Grass's home town, Danzig, will arise. Like the fish, the fisherman is immortal, and down through the ages they move together. As Grass blends his ingredients into a powerful brew, he shows himself at the peak of his linguistic inventiveness. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book
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"One of the most exuberantly inventive works in recent European fiction." -The New York Times Book Review

"Flavored with dill, stuffed with prunes, and awash with beer, The Flounder is a kind of Germanic One Hundred Years of Solitude, a Baltic Ulysses (at least in scale) and fantastic in any language." -The Washington Post Book World