Gunter Grass began his writing career as a poet and dramatist. His early plays, four of which are collected in this volume, show the brilliant inventiveness and the verbal pyrotechnics that made his later novels electrifying. As with the novels, the plays' surface farce and absurdity enwrap complex motives. Flood stands for mankind's survival of yet another catastrophe. In Mister, Mister, Grass plays the sinisterly innocent games of childhood. Only Ten Minutes to Buffalo spoofs the grandiloquence of stationary drivers who delude themselves that they are advancing at top speed. And in The Wicked Cooks no less is at stake than the secret of life.

Grass's key images and motives ring their changes in these plays, which are but another facet of his many-sided creativity.