The rat /

``A melange of fable, history, polemic, diatribe and jeremiad, its prose interspersed with verse, The Rat . . . defies brief description and amply displays Grass's fecund imagination,'' stated PW . The flounder and the tin drummer of previous works reappear and ``Manheim's heroic translation lucidly conveys Grass's linguistic idiosyncrasies, bizarre neologisms and madcap eccentricities.'' (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

And the rats shall inherit the earth, or so Grass concludes in this wonderful work of speculative virtuosity. With no less a subject before him than the ultimate fate of humankind, this superb German writer weaves together stories to produce an imaginative whole. As the oracular She-rat tells of humanity's demise and the rat's ultimate dominion, Grass himself fights back with memories and dreams, seeking to establish a better future through the acts of history and mind. Meanwhile, a barge crewed by women plies the Baltic Sea. And Oscar Matzerath, the drummer of Grass's early novel The Tin Drum, now appears as a 60-year-old film producer with a plan to film the natural world before it dies in chemical offal. Wildly entertaining as well as thought provoking. Paul E. Hutchison, English Dept., Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.