Gunter Grass and Norman Mailer Interview

Nobel Prize-winning novelist Gunter Grass and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Norman Mailer discussed their life and work with novelist Andrew O’Hagan on stage before an audience. Gunter Grass and then Norman Mailer were interviewed separately by Andrew O’Hagan. Then the three joined in conversation in a program titled “The 20th Century on Trial.” Gunter Grass talked about his memoir, Peeling the Onion, recently published by Harcourt, in which he divulged his participation in the Waffen SS at the age of seventeen. He spoke in English with some assistance from a translator. Norman Mailer talked about his first novel in almost ten years, The Castle in the Forest: A Novel, published by Random House, which focuses on the childhood of Adolf Hitler.

This LIVE from the NYPL event in the Celeste Bartos Forum was co-sponsored by the Goethe-Institut New York, Harcourt, International Center of Photography, The Paris Review, and Steidl. close