Nobel-winning German novelist Günter Grass dies

Risingbd Desk: Günter Grass, Germany’s Nobel Prize-winning author, widely regarded as the country`s most famous writer, has died at the age of 87.

Grass, who is best known for his first novel, The Tin Drum (1959), a seminal text in European magic realism, died on Monday, in the German city of Lübeck, his publishing company said.

Grass was born in 1927 in Danzig-Langfuhr of Polish-German parents. After military service and captivity by American forces 1944-46, he worked as a farm labourer and miner and studied art in Düsseldorf and Berlin.

The Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999, praising him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history".

For many, Grass was the voice of a German generation that came of age in World War Two and bore the burden of their parents` guilt for the atrocities of the Nazis.

For decades, Mr. Grass pursued a career, parallel to his literary work, as a political activist and liberal provocateur. He advocated for environmental conservation, debt relief for poor countries and generous policies regarding political asylum. The United States, and what he regarded as its militarism, was a frequent target.

Source: Agencies

risingbd/DHAKA/Apr 13, 2015/Augustin Sujan