![]() ![]() ![]() “The Great Mahlke” as his friend mythologises him, joins the narrator and other boys exploring a half-sunken minesweeper and a sunken barge. The second book in the “Danzig trilogy” which began with The Tin Drum, Cat and Mouse is told by the only friend of Joachim Mahlke, a lonely and disaffected boy growing up during the second world war. Cat and Mouse (1961, first English translation 1963) The mix of political drama, myth and allegory made the novel highly influential in the development of magical realist fiction. His picaresque adventures then lead him through periods as a nude model, criminal gangmaster, and jazz drummer. Oskar is swept along by the convulsions of history, joining a troupe of performing dwarfs sent to entertain German troops at the frontline following the Nazi invasion of Poland. Born in the Free City of Danzig in 1924, his “presumptive fathers” are his mother’s husband – a dedicated Nazi – and her lover, a Polish patriot. At the age of three, Oskar resolves that he will never grow up and hurls himself down the stairs to ensure he will retain the body of a child. ![]()
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