Excerpt
"It may not be a memoir, but it is an exercise in soul-searching…this is a novel of great humility, questioning whether the measure of a life really is a lifes work... [Grass] shows a remarkable willingness to kick a hole in the usual self-importance of a prize-winning author."
-The New York Times Book Review
"Functioning both as experimental fiction and as a sequel of sorts to Peeling the Onion, Grasss latest sheds light on a role the revered German author has thus far only touched upon: fatherhood."
- Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A family documentary in the form of a novel, leaving the reader to decide where the line blurs between fact and fiction…A short, engaging and puzzling novel: “He simply dreams us up!” says a daughter, as the reader wonders what to make of these dreams.”
– Kirkus Reviews
"The Box offers "the spectacle of a superb writer examining with playful seriousness and intelligent candor the relations between his work and the past."
-Boston Globe "Freed from the defensive crouch of his straightforward memoir, Grass has produced something more obscure and occasionally just as beautiful."
-The Daily Beast
"Is writing in this way the act of a generous father, maybe even a penitent one, or of a tyrannical egotist? This ambiguity is what gives The Box its modest but genuine power."
-Adam Kirsch, Slate
"The Box moves between the voices of his eight children, in whose collage-like recollections their elusive father-- along with a mysterious woman whose Agfa box camera is an almost magical source of inspiration-- takes shape."
-Vogue ("Fall's Best Memoirs")