Too Far Afield by Günter Grass
Took close to a month to read this 560 page epic. Had to re-read some parts as I didn't fully grasp what it was about until I almost finished reading it. Too Far Afield is very similar to Grass' other books like Tin Drum or Crabwalk, that deals with German history, and how Germans try to come to terms with their own rather colourful past. The book goes through almost two hundred years of German history starting from the early eighteen hundreds to the late nineteen eighties when the Berlin wall fell and Germany was reunited. The book is told from the perspective of two main characters - Theo Wuttke, an author and intellectual, and Ludwig Hoftaller, an officer of the secret police. The title of the book gets it's name from the German novel Effi Briest by Theodore Fontaine. This sentence is found before the beginning of the book: "...and Briest said queitly, 'Oh, Luise, let it be...that takes us too far afield.'" And then for a long time nothing more. The sil