It's here! Browse the 2024 Penguin Christmas gift guide
The Flounder

The Flounder

Summary

Günter Grass, says The Times, 'is on his own as an artist', and indeed this extraordinary, provoking and joyously Rabelaisian celebration of life, food and sex is unique.

Lifted from their ancient fairytale, the fisherman and his wife are still living today. During the months of Ilsebill's pregnancy, the fisherman tells her of his adventures through time with the Flounder, constituting a complete reworking of social, political and gastronomic history.

Reviews

  • A masterpiece by one of the most gifted and original of contemporary writers. It is a book that will repay study and rereading. Only a churlish, insular reader could fail to respond to its bold and exhilarating historical sweep, its poetic celebration of food and the arts of cooking
    New Statesman

About the author

Günter Grass

Günter Grass (1927–2015) was Germany’s most celebrated post-war writer. He was a creative artist of remarkable versatility: novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, graphic artist. Grass’s first novel, The Tin Drum, is widely regarded as one of the finest novels of the twentieth century, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more