The title of Günter Grass' My Century is a bit misleading, as the well-timed book isn't exactly a memoir. At least not all of it. Grass' "my" represents the collective voice of the German people (which, of course, at times includes Grass), who relate the last century in short, year-by-year segments. Generally, each chapter is told by a different person, a different "I," and the subject of each discourse shifts to reflect each character's perspective on the events transpiring around him or her. This ambitious, fragmented-narrative format is an intriguing way for Grass—who won the 1999 Nobel Prize for Literature—to approach the 20th century, and in many ways Germany is the perfect setting for such a centennial retrospective. The country was at the center of two world wars, experienced economic depression and prosperity, epitomized the conflict between freedom and totalitarianism, and symbolized the triumph of Democracy over Communism. Few nations so vacillated between impressive progress and great horror. Unfortunately, Grass' focus makes the book an especially difficult read for anyone not deeply familiar with German history. References to labor strikes, authors, battles, debates, marches, politicians, and celebrities fly by with the assumption that the reader knows what Grass is writing about, and even when a familiar name or event pops up—the rise of Hitler, the Holocaust, the Nuremberg Trials, Vietnam, the Gulf War—it's often broached from a distinctly German vantage point. Yet in terms of Grass' technical grasp of time, as well as his novel method of approaching the past (through letters, flashbacks, anecdotes, and autobiography), the book is an interesting summation of the 1900s, a century marked as much by war and regret as it was by hope and humanity.