PEELING THE ONION

Günter Grass, the German writer best known for The Tin Drum, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999. Given his stature, readers have awaited his memoir eagerly. But no matter how interesting the memoir or the life behind it, fifteen-and-a-half hours is a long time to listen to a mostly monotone and rather slow reading. The plus side, of course, is that listeners aren't likely to miss a word of Grass's book, which became a controversial and hurried publication when it became known that he was about to be outed as a Nazi sympathizer, something he'd vociferously attacked in others. Still, the links between autobiography and fiction are fascinating as he continually inserts references to how the person in his real life was transformed into a character in one of his many novels. R.R. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 07/ JAN 08]