US author forgoes Günter Grass prize

David Eggers will not attend the Günter Grass Foundation’s awards ceremony in Germany on Friday because of the eponymous poet’s comments on Israel and Iran, Eggers’s agent said on Friday.

Eggers, best known for his memoir, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” will be awarded the Günter Grass Foundation’s Albatross prize for his most recent book, “Zeitoun” about a Syrian-American accused of terrorist links during Hurricane Katrina.

Eggers’s agent said in a statement released by his German publisher that he won’t attend the event in Bremen because he did not want to be implicated in the controversy surrounding Grass’s poem “What must be said.”

“Eggers won’t be coming for the ceremony because in light of the recent debate, he would be forced into commenting, endlessly and needlessly, on Grass and Israel and Iran, when the purpose of his visit was supposed to be about discussing his book Zeitoun, and the plight of Americans during and after Hurricane Katrina,” the statement said.