Four Plays

Gunter Grass began his writing career as a poet and dramatist. His early plays, four of which are collected in this volume, show the brilliant inventiveness and the verbal pyrotechnics that made his later novels electrifying. As with the novels, the plays' surface farce and absurdity enwrap complex motives. Flood stands for mankind's survival of yet another catastrophe. In Mister, Mister, Grass plays the sinisterly innocent games of childhood. Only Ten Minutes to Buffalo spoofs the grandiloquence of stationary drivers who delude themselves that they are advancing at top speed. And in The Wicked Cooks no less is at stake than the secret of life.
Grass's key images and motives ring their changes in these plays, which are but another facet of his many-sided creativity.

About the author

GÜNTER GRASS (1927–2015), Germany's most celebrated contemporary writer, attained worldwide renown with the publication of his novel The Tin Drum in 1959. A man of remarkable versatility, Grass was a poet, playwright, social critic, graphic artist, and novelist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1999.
 

Summary

Flood; Mister, Mister; Only Ten Minutes to Buffalo; The Wicked Cooks. Short plays belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd. Introduction by Marin Esslin. Translated by Ralph Manheim and A. Leslie Willson. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.

Product details

• Authors: Gunter Grass, Günter Grass
• Assisted by: Martin Esslin (Translation)
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 20.03.1968
• EAN: 9780156331500
• ISBN: 978-0-15-633150-0
• No. of pages: 304
• Weight: 4531 g
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; FICTION: Literary, DRAMA: American / General, FICTION: Short Stories (single author), FICTION: Anthologies (multiple authors), LITERARY COLLECTIONS: European / German, DRAMA: European / General, FICTION: World Literature / Europe (General), LITERARY COLLECTIONS: European / Scandinavian, FICTION: World Literature / Germany / General, play;theater;screenplay;monologue;script;1967;1968;1969, play;screenplay;script;monologue;theater;1967;1968;1969