Gunter Grass, the German Nobel Literature prize winner and author of The Tin Drum, has died aged 87.
Reports say the World War II veteran passed away at a clinic in the city of Luebeck.
Grass was born in what was then Danzig and served in the German military in World War 2. In 1959, he published his breakthrough anti-Nazi novel, The Tin Drum and went on to become a vocal opponent of German reunification in 1990, arguing that it had been carried out too hastily.
After the war, Grass’s home town became the Polish city ofGdansk and he spent much of his later life living near Luebeck. He also spent months in an American prisoner of war camp after the war.
Many of his writings focused on the Nazi era, the horrors of the war, and the destruction and guilt that remained after Germany’s defeat.
Grass’s famous, The Tin Drum was adapted into a 1979 film, which won both the Palme d’Or, in the same year, and theAcademy Award for Best Foreign Language Film the following year.
Then in 1999, the author was awarded the Nobel prize for literature for portraying “the forgotten face of history”.
