Peeling The Onion

Peeling the Onion is a searingly honest memoir that evokes Grass` modest upbringing in Danzig, his time as a boy soldier fighting the Russians and concludes with the writing of his masterpiece, The Tin Drum, in Paris. Grass parents ran a corner shop, but his mother, whom he adored, encouraged him towards books and music. Like most of his peers, he joined the Hitler Youth and in 1944, when he was just 17, he was sent to the Eastern front with the Waffen SS and found himself facing Russian tanks and machine guns. Recovering fron shrapnel wounds in a military hospital he had the good gortune to be taken prisoner by the Americans.