Sebastiano Vassalli (1941-2015)

Sebastiano Vassalli (source)

“Not reading at all is better than reading certain books. I have always been wary of that   marketing advertising books like milk, as in Fellini’s Dolce vita: ‘Read more books, books are good for you!’, and so on. Reading what? You can’t generalise. There is a moment in one’s life, however, when distinctions are of no use. It’s when a kid starts reading. We fall in love with reading before we fall in love with books: and it’s not useful, it’s not appropriate to demand a choice from a ten, eleven-year-old.”

Günter Grass

A month ago today, on April 13^th, Günter Grass died aged 87. He was one of the dominant figures of German contemporary literature, who rose to international fame and earned a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999. His writing mainly dealt with the German Nazi past and is considered to be part of the genre of “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” (coming to terms with the past). He was socially engaged throughout his life and a firm supporter of left-wing politics, something he had in common with the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, who coincidentally died on the same day as Grass. The University Library has an extensive collection of Grass’s literary works and our holdings can be easily browsed by searching the catalogue for Grass as author, or doing a subject heading search for books about him.

A selection of bookcovers desigend by Grass (S746.bb.200.1)

Grass originally wanted to be a painter and enjoyed and tried to incorporate painting into his life as much as possible. He reportedly said that it was something that he had always taken a keen interest in. He illustrated several of his works and usually also the covers of his books, but he also worked on his art as a painter and sculptor on works not connected to his literary output. He published some of his paintings later himself and several exhibitions were held. The UL also has a substantial collection of these works and catalogues that may not come directly to mind when thinking about Grass.

Eduardo Galeano

Eduardo Galeano (source)

The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano passed away on 13 April 2015, aged 74. He started his career in journalism, but came to greater prominence in 1971 with what remains his best-known work, Las venas abiertas de América Latina (original: 220.d.97.88; translation: 670:8.c.95.866), a history of Latin America from the time of Columbus onwards, focusing on the economic exploitation and military oppression that had shaped the continent. This book remained popular and respected throughout the decades, and even became an unexpected bestseller in 2009, when the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez publicly gifted a copy to Barack Obama.

Galeano had a long and varied writing career, throughout which he tried to bring to light the usually unwritten history of Latin America and the world – that of the victims, the poor and the downtrodden – as he felt that without acknowledging and understanding this, governments and nations could never truly progress. His outspoken socialist stance unsurprisingly put him at odds with the right-wing dictatorships that dominated the Southern Cone in the 1970s and 1980s. He first fled Uruguay and then Argentina in the mid-1970s, and wrote another of his most famous works, Memoria del fuego (original: 670:8.c.95.547-9; translation: 9743.c.334-336), whilst in exile.