Nobel Prize-winning author Günter Grass has been wrestling with Germany's past for decades now, but no book since The Tin Drum has generated as much excitement as this searing and compelling account of the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. A German cruise ship turned refugee carrier, it was attacked by a Soviet submarine in January of 1945. Some 9,000 people went down in the Baltic Sea, making it the deadliest maritime disaster in history.

Born to an unwed mother on a lifeboat the night of the attack, Paul Pokriefke is a middle-aged hack-journalist trying to piece together the tragic events. While his domineering mother sees her whole existence in terms of that calamitous moment, Paul wishes their lives could have been less influenced by the past. And for his teenage son, who dabbles in the dark, extreme-right corners of the Internet, the Gustloff embodies the widespread denial of Germany's wartime suffering.

"Scuttling backward to move forward"--reaching this way and that across both history and narrative--Crabwalk is at once a captivating tale of a tragedy at sea and a fearless examination of how different generations of Germans now view their past.