This study traces the career of the most widely read and influential German novelist in the second half of the 20th century. It shows in particular how his experiences as a teenage Nazi shaped his thinking, both in his novels and his role as critic and campaigner, from "The Tin Drum" (1959), his most famous novel, to "My Century" (1999), from his public protest against the building of the Berlin Wall (1961) to his diatribes against Helmut Kohl in the late 1990s. This new paperback edition includes new material on his previous two books, "My Century" and "Crabwalk", and includes a revised bibliography and chronology.