The Rat

First US edition. With full "A B C D E" letter line present. Thick 8vo. Pp. [x], 371, [3 (blank)]. Quarter-bound black linen cloth over black paper boards, lettered in silver to spine. Jacket illustration by Günter Grass. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book. Remainder mark to lower page edges, else Fine.

Translated from the German by Ralph Manheim. Originally published as Die Rättin by Hermann Luchterhand Verlag, Darmstadt, in 1986.

A work of speculative fiction, surmising that rats shall inherit the earth upon man's demise. Inspired by a rat given to the author as a Christmas present, the oracular She-rat keeps on intruding in the narrative as the narrator valiantly fights back with memories and dreams. With a guest appearance of Oscar Matzerath, the drummer boy of Grass's classic novel The Tin Drum (1959). Winner of the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature. "[An] exhilarating, exhausting, maddening, brilliant, funny and profoundly disturbing novel." –Janette Turner Hospital, The New York Times