Martin Walser

Martin Johannes Walser is a German writer born in 1927. Author of some 50 novels, plays, screenplays and radio plays, including several which have won acclaim in Germany and abroad, he is among the most important figures of post-war German literature. A former member of Group 47, a collection of leftist intellectuals from West Germany, including Günter Grass and Heinrich Böll, he regularly takes part in public and political debate. In 1998, he sparked a scandal by speaking publicly about "the instrumentalisation of the Holocaust."