Gunter Grass (1927–2015) was one of the most important contemporary German writers. He studied sculpture and graphic arts in Düsseldorf and Berlin, and then devoted himself to literature as a novelist, poet, and playwright. With his first novel, he became an ambassador for the German generation that grew up in the Nazi era and survived the war, and his The Tin Drum was declared one of the greatest works of modern post-war German literature and a key text of European magical realism. It is the first book of the Danzig Trilogy , which is completed by Cat and Mouse and Dog Years . As Grass was an active supporter of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, his works have a left-wing political dimension. He linked his work to current politics, and he expressed his political opinions publicly. His significant works include The Rat , The Rat , My Century , The Evil Frogs , The Wide Field , The Crab's Footsteps , and his autobiography While Peeling Onions . The Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, praising him as a writer whose "humorous black narratives show the forgotten face of history."