The Box: Tales from the Dark Room

A fictionalized autobiographical account (recalling J. M. Coetzee's Summertime and Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana) The Box is an inspired and daring work of fiction. In its candor, wit, and earthiness, it is Nobel Prize-winner Gunter Grass at his best. ''Once upon a time there was a father who, because he had grown old, called together his sons and daughters -- four, five, six, eight in number -- and finally convinced them, after long hesitation, to do as he wished. Now they are sitting around a table and begin to talk. . . '' In a great literary experiment, Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass writes in the voices of his eight children as they record memories of their childhoods, of growing up, and of their father, who was always at work on a new book, always at the margins of their lives.