[NP] Grass & beyond

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

 Of course, Grass is very famous. Furthermore, Mr. P. has probably read him. 
 Fine. Nevertheless, I have great difficulties to accept him as the adequate 
 representative of contemporary German literature on this list. There are better 
 people! Personally I like only the first 2/3 of the "Blechtrommel". Over the  
 years, the books of Grass got worse and worse. And his, well, 'political 
 thinking' is hopelessly overestimated. Today in this country he is read mainly 
 by boring old SPD-voters & by nostalgic East Germans. Not exactly my kind of 
 people. 

 Who are the better comtemporary German writers? Wolfgang Koeppen, Paul Celan, 
 Arno Schmidt, Ingeborg Bachmann, Uwe Johnson, Hubert Fichte, Rolf Dieter 
 Brinkmann & Rainald Goetz. Except for the lastnamed they're all physically 
 dead. But their writings are alive! You may check that out. Unfortunately, I 
 don't know about translations. 

 Strongly reading, Kai