The Tin Drum
Grass is best known for his first novel, "The Tin Drum" (1959), a key text in European magic realism. It was the first book of his Danzig Trilogy, the other two being "Cat and Mouse" and "Dog Years". His works are frequently considered to have a left-wing political dimension, and Grass was an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). "The Tin Drum" was adapted as a film of the same name, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. In 1999, the Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize in Literature, praising him as a writer "whose frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history".