Grass SS memoir almost sells out within two days

The book in which German Nobel literature laureate Günter Grass, 78, conducts an anguished exploration of his Nazi past and reveals his Waffen SS membership has almost sold out within two days, the publisher said Thursday. The company, Steidl Verlag, said 130,000 of the 150,000 first copies of Peeling the Onion had been shipped to booksellers and a second impression ordered from the printers. The book officially went on sale Wednesday, two weeks before the date originally planned. The Vatican meanwhile declined comment on a passage in the book where Grass describes philosophical chats in a US internment camp in 1946 with ‘my chum Joseph,’ a youth the same age as Grass. The writer believes the youth was Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. (DPA, Expatica Germany,August 18, 2006)

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