Guenter Grass

BERLIN — Guenter Grass was to Germany what William Faulkner was to the old American South: The bard, scourge and pathfinder of a society ruined by moral disgrace and humiliated by military defeat.

The Nobel-winning writer died Monday at age 87.

“His literary legacy will stand next to that of Goethe,” German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters said in a statement following the news of his death.

Combining naturalistic detail with fantastical images, Grass captured the German reaction to the rise of Nazism, the horrors of the war and the guilt that lingered after Adolf Hitler’s fall.

By The Associated Press