The Tin Drum was Günter Grass's first novel, published in 1959. It was an instant success and became the German author's most iconic work, and he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999. It tells the story of Oscar Matzerath, a boy who, at the age of three, refuses to grow up and has become an iconic literary character in contemporary literature. Through a provocative—and sometimes macabre—style, combined with a boundless imagination, Grass revisits the history of his time, delivering a scathing critique.