Bang the tin drum slowly

Does it matter that Nobel laureate Günter Grass was a member of the Waffen SS in his youth? No. It was a different time and a different place. And his life and his work speak for themselves. He is an extraordinary novelist, certainly one of the greatest of the past fifty years, a humanist, a man of peace.

But it's an interesting story nonetheless -- and, as he himself put it, "[i]t had to come out, finally". More here.

(And now, if you haven't yet, go read The Tin Drum.)