Při loupání cibule

On the threshold of his eightieth birthday, Günter Grass has presented an autobiography that is - as is unimaginable for this born fabulist - artistically composed and stylized, constantly oscillating on the borderline between authentic document and fiction, proving and openly admitting that every memoir, even with the most sincere attempt at truthfulness, is always a creation of a story and characters, not a mere "faithful" reproduction of them.
Here the author recounts real events, people and experiences, most of which later entered his artistic texts (especially the "Gdansk trilogy": The Tin Drum, The Cat and the Mouse, The Dog Years), as if reversing the direction of the artistic process: If he used to transform the matter of life into an artistic form, now he is retrospectively - and with admitted uncertainty at every turn - trying to reconstruct the life and historical reality from which his artistic stories and characters emerged.
The result of this attempt, however, is in turn a work of art, an engaging narrative with distinctive characters, punctuated stories and a Grassian playful style, but also a work as a serious, honest and reflective testimony to the time and society in which the author lived.
These virtues of the work were overlaid immediately after publication by heated controversy that focused on a single point throughout the book: Grass's late admission that the unit to which he was assigned as a volunteer at the end of the war belonged to an SS division. The unbiased reader will see that this is far from the only reason to read this late work by the great author.

Czech edition