The Tin Drum
"The Tin Drum" established Grass as one of the leading authors of Germany, and also set a high bar of comparison for all of his subsequent works, which were often compared unfavorably to this early work by critics. Nonetheless, in West Germany of the late 1950s and early '60s the book could be controversial, and its "immorality" prompted the city of Bremen to revoke a prize it had bestowed upon him. When Grass received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1999 the Nobel Committee stated that the publication of "The Tin Drum" "was as if German literature had been granted a new beginning after decades of linguistic and moral destruction".