Gunter Grass was a German author, playwright, and sculptor born on October 16, 1927, in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland). He was one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century and a central figure in the post-war German literature. Grass was raised in a working-class family in Danzig, where his father worked as a grocer. After attending local schools, he was drafted into the German army in 1944 at the age of 17. Grass's experiences during World War II had a profound impact on him and informed much of his later work. After the war, he worked in a mine and as a stonemason before studying art in Düsseldorf and Berlin. He began writing poetry and plays in the 1950s, and his first novel, The Tin Drum, was published in 1959.

The Tin Drum tells the story of a young boy named Oskar Matzerath, who decides at the age of three to stop growing, and who communicates with the world through the piercing scream of a tin drum. The novel is set in Danzig in the years leading up to and during World War II, and explores the themes of German identity, the rise of Nazism, and the complicity of ordinary Germans in the crimes of the regime.