Nicole A. Thesz: The Communicative Event in the Works of Günter Grass. Stages of Speech: 1959-2015. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018. 306 pp. $ 90.00. How should the world remember Günter Grass - as the renowned author and eventual recipient of the Noble Prize for literature who contributed significantly to the postwar German literary movement Vergangenheitsbewältigung or as someone who, in spite of his public image as a writer who faced the past, long withheld information about having been a member of the Waffen- SS during World War II? Of course, he had multiple facets to his character, and Nicole A� Thesz’s The Communicative Event in the Works of Günter Grass offers a multi-sided view of the author and his oeuvre with a focus on his pronounced attentiveness to the power of language� Divided into four parts and conveyed in concise, lucid prose, Thesz’s study traces how active dialogue, open debate, speech acts, and the identity-forming capacity of language function as a defining element throughout Grass’ works� In fact, Grass’ characterization of speech and language changed over the decades, revealing itself sometimes as a tool used for guileful and even violent purposes, sometimes for educating the people, and at other times simply for introspection and the literary creation of the self� Part I examines Grass’ communicative approach throughout the Danziger Trilogie� Oskar, the protagonist of Die Blechtrommel (1959), begins life already as a late talker but then develops a voice that can shatter glass, indicating the unusual power of language� Indeed, various characters use language to categorize and dominate others, especially throughout the Second World War� Oskar’s later role model Bebra never grows to heroic stature, but through grandiloquent speeches he seeks to increase his aura in ways reminiscent of so many demagogues of the era� Even in the postwar period, similar patterns of communication gave rise to power imbalances, suggesting some continuity between wartime culture and Adenauer’s Germany� In Katz und Maus (1961), Joachim Mahlke constantly strives to impress his rivals and the society from which he desperately desires approval, and it turns out that he understands his culture well� Former graduates of his school who return from the war as heroes give speeches that underscore the power of language in the Third Reich� Finally, in Hundejahre (1963) communicative strategies enable people both to cope with and also conceal the Nazi past, suggesting that the democratic society that former West Germany had become remained unable to adequately confront its recent history� Reviews 401 Grass’ move to establish a space for public, critical debate during the 1960s is the focus of Part II, which explains how his political efforts sought to create new discourses that furthered democratic aims� The society depicted in örtlich betäubt (1969) hopes for open dialogue on the past, but a divide persists between the younger, more revolutionary generation and the older generation that still carefully weighs words and remains incapable of deeds� The autobiographical novel Aus dem Tagebuch einer Schnecke (1972) portrays Grass’ efforts for the SPD and the Willy Brandt campaign and amounts to a sort of a call to the people to have difficult conversations, such as about the Holocaust, suggesting that effective communication can lead to responsible citizenship and parenting� Moving on to Part III, we find that Unkenrufe (1992) expresses Grass’ appeal to his audience to engage in cross-cultural dialogue for the benefit of new challenges in the post-Wall era� The characters Reschke and Piątkowska symbolically play out an imagined German-Polish dialogue that glosses over national differences for the sake of an all too fictitious harmony� While Reschke is sensitive to the call of the toads in the Polish countryside, profit-hungry German business tramples over the natural world and presages a doomed relationship� In Mein Jahrhundert (1999), Grass turns his attention to recounting moments in German history and stakes a sort of claim over the time period� His use of first-person narrative allows the work to jibe with oral history, but his tone shifts toward cynicism, stressing that speech acts fundamentally shaped the last century� Whether the infamous speech of Kaiser Wilhelm II that sent German soldiers off to put down the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900 or Hitler’s speeches to the unemployed masses, oratory language profoundly impacted the fate of the German people� Grass suggests that, though the German people were responsible for their own actions, they were also manipulated by devious words during especially hard times� In Part IV we encounter a new version of Grass in the monologues of Beim Häuten der Zwiebel (2006), the book in which he infamously divulges his own earlier connection to the Nazi regime� A naive youth, he failed to question what was going on, even when people around him began to disappear, but Grass depicts himself also as a man who emerged skeptical of all ideologies in the postwar era and who ultimately could reject the very idea of “leaders,” a concept that reminded of Nazi discourse� Eventually, he not only became a respected writer in the German literary tradition but also cast himself in Grimms Wörter: Eine Liebeserklärung (2010) as someone with a special affinity to the Brothers Grimm, men who, like Grass, embraced political ideals and found their home in the Kulturnation of German language and literature� 402 Reviews Nicole A� Thesz’s book, which covers more than this brief review communicates, stands out for its timeliness� Not only does it offer a perspective on how forceful rhetoric during difficult times shaped German society in fateful ways, but it may also fill a gaping hole in the knowledge of so many young people in the United States today who have never even heard of big names like Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, and Christa Wolf� Günter Grass, whose works are absolutely filled with historical allusion, belongs on this list of famous and yet unknown writers, but Thesz’s volume explains the contexts within which his works take on meaning, thus making them accessible today� Purdue University Fort Wayne Lee M. Roberts Kristy R. Boney and Jennifer Marston William (Eds.): Dimensions of Storytelling in German Literature and Beyond: “For once, telling it all from the beginning.” Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018. 290 pp. $ 95.00. In Dimensions of Storytelling in German Literature and Beyond: “For once, telling it all from the beginning,” Kristy R� Boney and Jennifer Marston William have compiled a fitting tribute to the work of Helen Fehervary, Professor Emerita of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Ohio State University� The book’s subtitle, drawn from Anna Seghers’s novel Transit (1944) about a German refugee recounting his attempt to flee Nazi-occupied Europe, speaks to the book’s various and interrelated foci� Dimensions of Storytelling, divided into three sections, features essays that, 1) honor Fehervary’s significant and career-long engagement with Seghers, 2) reflect on the role of storytelling in modernity - a central preoccupation of Seghers herself, and, 3) recognize the significance of personal perspectives for telling stories about signal historical events� Part I, “Anna Seghers: A Missing Piece in the Canon of Modernist Storytellers,” features essays by prominent scholars of Seghers and East German literature� Fehervary’s achievements include her work to make known the breadth and depth of Seghers’s intellectual and artistic development across the twentieth century� It is appropriate, then, that this section covers topics that span Seghers’s life, and represents the methodological perspectives that Fehervary’s approach to Seghers’s oeuvre has helped make possible� In “Anna Seghers in Heidelberg: The Formative Years,” Christiane Zehl Romero outlines the intellectual milieu in which Seghers circulated as a university student - a group that included exiles from Eastern European countries who had fled failed revolutions, including her Hungarian husband, Laszlo Radványi� Peter Beicken examines how, in Seghers’s “Ausflug der toten Mädchen” - written Reviews 403