Crabwalk
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| Crabwalk | |
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| Author | Günter Grass |
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| Original title | Im Krebsgang |
| Country | Germany |
| Language | German |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Luchterhand |
| Publication date | 2002 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | 3-598-80055-X |
Crabwalk, published in Germany in 2002 as Im Krebsgang, is a novel by Danzig-born German author Günter Grass who had received the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature.
It is based on the story of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945, a cruise ship overloaded with 9000 refugees fleeing from the Red Army, and its effect on three generations of a German family. The book is narrated by Paul Pokriefke, a failed journalist born during the incident on a torpedo boat in the convoy of the Gustloff. His German family struggles to cope with the implications of the disaster, with his son developing an interest in the Gustloff sinking based on right-wing Internet pages.
The Wilhelm Gustloff was torpedoed by a soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea on the night of January 30, 1945. Approximately 9000 people perished in the attack, making it the worst maritime disaster of all time. The narrator commences with the story of Wilhelm Gustloff, the German leader of the Swiss NSDAP (Nazi) party after whom the ship would later be named, and his assassin, David Frankfurter, a Jewish medical student. Simultaneously the Russian submarine commander, Alexander Marinesko, gives the order to attack the ship.
The title, Crabwalk, defined by Grass as "scuttling backward to move forward," refers to both the necessary reference to various events, some occurring at the same time, the same events that would lead to the eventual disaster. Crabwalk might also imply a more abstract backward glance at history, in order to allow a people to move forward. The protagonist's awkward relationships with his mother and his estranged son, explored via the crabbed process of scouring the wreckage of history for therapeutic insight, lends appropriateness to the title.
[edit] References
- Crabwalk. Transl. from the German by Krishna Winston. Orlando; Austin; New York; San Diego; Toronto; London: Harcourt: 2002. ISBN 0-15-100764-0
