
After a shell explodes on the Western Front, Adrien Fournier comes to in the mysterious silence of the Officers' Ward.
He understands little except that his life has been altered forever, as he begins an unprecedented journey to the remotest outposts of human experience, where heroism, friendship, pity and humor take unexpected new forms.
Saturday Play 09.11.2002 The Officers' Ward by Marc Dugain
Gunter Grass' classic novel of the rise and fall of Hitler as seen through the eyes of the dwarfish narrator, Oskar Matzerath. Not caring for the world he is growing up in, a small boy determines to remain a child. The epic sweep of Grass' novel satirises German nationalism and the rise and fall of the Nazi movement.
Episode 1: Germany, 1930. Hitler rises to power.Three-year-old Oskar decides to stop growing and talking. Instead, he plays his tin drum through the dark years of Nazism.
Günter Grass - The Tin Drum - 1 of 2 - BBC 1999-03-07
Episode 2: The Second World War is raging. Oskar, on the run, discovers sex, jazz and the black market. Soon his mad drumming will make him a star.
Günter Grass - The Tin Drum - 2 of 2 - BBC 1999-03-14