Gunter Grass narrates fifty years of his life, from his beginnings as a stonemason in Dusseldorf, in 1946, to the reception of the Nobel Prize in Literature in Stockholm, in 1999. Half a century of extreme activity--poetry, novels, theater, sculptures, engravings, watercolors -- that makes one think that this genius is an immense and complete work of art. Grass had never before been so autobiographical and open; unpublished poems, forgotten photos and drawings illustrate this essential book for those who want to get to know the real Gunter Grass.