bio notes:
born: 10/16/1927
born as: Gunter Wilhelm Grass
nationality: Germany

German poet, novelist, playwright, sculptor, and printmaker who, with his extraordinary first novel Die Blechtrommel (1959; The Tin Drum), became the literary spokesman for the German generation that grew up in the Nazi era. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999.