The Flounder

Günter Grass · 1927–2015 · Germany

Originally Der Butt (German)

Why it matters

A talking, millennia-old flatfish that once counseled the patriarchy stands trial before a tribunal of feminists, narrating nine successive ages of cooking, eating, and the war between the sexes. Grass at his most gleefully excessive and encyclopedic.

At a glance

A sprawling, digressive structure spanning millennia with no single throughline plot.