Cat and Mouse

by Günter Grass and Gunter Grass

Book Overview

The setting is Danzig during World War II. The narrator recalls a boyhood scene in which a black cat pounces on his friend Mahlke's "mouse"-his prominent Adam's apple. This incident sets off a wild series of events that ultimately leads to Mahlke's becoming a national hero. Translated by Ralph Manheim. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156155516
• ISBN13: 9780156155519
• Release Date: October 1991
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Wet

I received a book that had a wet stain of something on the bottom I cut off the bottom of pages infected I will keep

Why is it I always end up liking books I read in school?

Okay, I'll admit freely: "Katz und Maus" was required reading in school, which obviously biased me against it immediately. What's worse, it was German postwar literature, which never fails to be depressing and downbeat. I knew I was in for a greuling read.And then, suddenly, it wasn't. In fact, I started liking it from the first line, and carried on until the end, which I'd give away if I said wasn't an end, so I'll let you read it yourself.The story is complicated and non-linear. It is told from a first person narrative, the exact reliability of which is consatantly brought into question, either by the fog of the years or deliberate misconstruction due to feelings of guilt, the narrator never seems too sure about what happened, often offering several different versions of the same story at the same time, and even going so far as to admit his own fictitiousness. The story that serves as a Leitmotiv, as well as title of the book, is the cat that attacked Mahlke's adam's apple, and exactly how it got there.What I found most striking about the book on first glance was the descriptions of the places and characters that the novella is centered on. At the same time, you have a feeling that it's merely a part of a greater whole. It fits in with the other two books in the so-called Danzig Trilogy seamlessly, yet still sets itself apart. I have another confession to make: I attend a German high school, and so I read it in German. In my opinion, though what I've read of the excerpts seems like a decent translation, Günter Grass is an author who uses the German language to its full extent, emplying every manner of grammatical and syntactical tricks to underline the story. These, unfotunately, are completely lost in the translation. If you understand German decently, I would strongly encourage you to seek out an original language text.

Growing Up in Nazi Germany

Joachim Mahlke and his friend Plienz (who is the narrator of the story) grow up in wartime Danzig, the free city disputed between Germany and Poland over which World War II started. Maybe the most striking feature of the novella is that it shows how natural the war and Nazi rule appear to those adolescents, simply because it is the only world they know. The "Great" Joachim Mahlke is the dubious hero of the story. His most striking feature is his huge Adam's apple, about which he feels highly self-conscious. Maybe he is trying so hard to be a hero to make the others forget his deformity? Is that what makes him dive into the sunken Polish minesweeper to retrieve all kinds of objects? Is that why he steals an Iron Cross from a war hero? (The Iron Cross is a medal worn around the neck, so that it would hide Mahlke's Adam's apple). And is it finally, the reason why Mahlke is so keen on joining the army himself? After a short time he has destroyed so many Russian tanks that he is awarded the Iron Cross himself... This summary will give you only a faint idea of the book, for it cannot encapsulate the feeling of summer and of being young which Grass manages to include - without denying the dreadful things happening at the very same time. In a book of less than 200 pages Grass resurrects the Danzig of his own youth. If you haven't read any Grass yet, start at this one; it is perfect.

Clever, moving, insightful; instantly a classic

This is a sensitively written tale of Joachim Mahlke and his "mouse" (that up-and-down-bobbing Adam's apple of his) -- through the eyes of an unreliable narrator reminiscing about his youth, and life, and morals, and how ordinary, decent people, some of them children, lived in Hitler's Germany. Realistic, telling, bittersweet. Lots of little chases and reflections: hence cat and mouse. Often uproariously funny, sometimes with a deeper message, sometimes just for humor. Cat and Mouse is the most purely enjoyable book I've read in a long time. Perhaps not the most challenging to read (that's not always a bad thing), but definitely the most enjoyable.There's lots of subsurface musing about war and the morality of killing... for an American, it reminds one of the collective guilt brought about by Vietnam. (But it is never in-your-face war-musings a la Tim O'Brien or anyone like that.) Yes, these teenage boys joined the Hitler Youth and aspired to shoot at British airplanes; but can we blame them? And can they morally redeem themselves decades later -- and need they?A side point: I was shocked by one frequent error among reviewers here. How can people read this book and think that it is set in Poland! Its German setting is perhaps its most salient feature. It is set in what was then Germany, although that part of Germany became Poland after WW2.

wunderbar!

Die Geschichte ist wirklick super muess ich sagen. Guenter Grass ist ein wohlgezeter Autor. Man fuehlt als ob man aller miterlebt. Du muesst "den grossen Malke" einfach kennenlernen!.