Madrid: Spain's top-selling newspaper said the interview, carried out at the author's home in Luebeck in northern Germany on March 21, was his last before his death aged 87.
Grass, who achieved worldwide fame with his debut and best-known novel "The Tin Drum" in 1959 was a pacifist, opposing the installation of nuclear missiles on German soil.
In his lengthy interview with El Pais, he also expressed concern over climate change and overpopulation.
"All of this together makes me realise that things are finite, that we don't have an indefinite amount of time," he said.
Grass pressed Germany for decades to face up to its Nazi past, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999, when the Swedish Academy said his "frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history".
Germany's Nobel-winning author Gunter Grass said he feared humanity was "sleepwalking" into a world war in the last interview he gave before his death yesterday.
"We have on the one side Ukraine, whose situation is not improving; in Israel and Palestine things are getting worse; the disaster the Americans left in Iraq, the atrocities of Islamic state and the problem of Syria," he told the Spanish newspaper El Pais in the interview published today.
"There is war everywhere; we run the risk of committing the same mistakes as before; so without realising it we can get into a world war as if we were sleepwalking," he added.
Grass, who achieved worldwide fame with his debut and best-known novel "The Tin Drum" in 1959 was a pacifist, opposing the installation of nuclear missiles on German soil.
Advertisement
"All of this together makes me realise that things are finite, that we don't have an indefinite amount of time," he said.
Advertisement
COMMENTS
Advertisement
Berlin University Invites Applications For Master's In International And Development Economics Thomas Mueller Ends Germany Career Following Euro 2024 Germany To Phase Out Chinese Telecom Giants From 5G Networks Windows Systems Restarting, Throwing Blue Screen Of Death Due To This Error Explained: What Is Causing The Dreaded 'Blue Screen Of Death' On Windows? Flights, Markets, Banks, Stock Exchange: Microsoft Outage Crippling Sectors Central Railways Jobs 2024: Applications For 2,424 Apprentice Posts Begin "Too Little Too Late": Ola CEO Slams Google For Slashing Maps' Fee Flights, Markets, Banks, Stock Exchange: Microsoft Outage Crippling Sectors Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world.