Günter Grass

Born in 1927 in the Free City of Danzig, Grass was drafted into the military at seventeen and served in the Waffen-SS from late 1944 until American forces took him prisoner in May 1945. Released a year later, he trained as a stonemason and sculptor before turning to writing in the 1950s, drawing repeatedly on the Danzig of his childhood. The Tin Drum arrived in 1959 - a magic realist landmark that became the first of his Danzig Trilogy, followed by Cat and Mouse and Dog Years. The 1979 film adaptation won the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. An active supporter of the Social Democratic Party, Grass carried a left-wing political edge through decades of work until the Swedish Academy awarded him the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature for black fables that "portray the forgotten face of history." He died in April 2015.