Guenter Grass blasts treatment of Greece

German Nobel literature laureate Guenter Grass has criticized Greece's treatment in the debt crisis, describing it in a new poem as a "country sentenced to poverty."

German Nobel literature laureate Guenter Grass has criticized Greece's treatment in the debt crisis, describing it in a new poem as a "country sentenced to poverty."

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The 84-year-old's latest work, "Europe's Disgrace," was published Saturday in the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. It comes less than two months after Grass triggered a storm of criticism with another intervention on a political issue - a prose poem sharply criticizing Israel amid the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.

Greece is struggling with austerity and reform programs demanded by creditors in exchange for rescue loans. Speculation is growing that it may end up leaving the 17-nation eurozone.

Grass writes that Greece has been "pilloried naked as a debtor."

He says: "You will waste away spiritlessly without the country whose spirit, Europe, conceived you."