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"An early masterpiece from the winner of the Nobel Prize hailed as the laureate of life under totalitarianism. Romania--the last months of the Ceausescu regime. Adina is a young schoolteacher. Paul is a musician. Clara works in a wire factory. Pavel is Clara's lover. But one of them works for the secret police and is reporting on all of the group.One day Adina returns home to discover that her fox fur rug has had its tail cut off. On another occasion it's the hindleg. Then a foreleg. The mutilated fur is a sign that she is being tracked by the secret police--the fox was ever the hunter.Images of photographic precision combine into a kaleidoscope of terror as Adina and her friends struggle to keep mind and body intact in a world pervaded by complicity and permeated with fear, where it's hard to tell victim from perpetrator.In The Fox Was Always a Hunter, Herta Müller once again uses language that displays the "concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose"--as the Swedish Academy noted upon awarding her the Nobel Prize--to create a hauntingly cinematic portrayal of the corruption of the soul under totalitarianism"--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member mjg123
When Herta Mueller was awarded the Nobel prize 2009 for literature I decided to give her another try. During my stay in Germany I read a lot of German literature and although Mueller isn't German, her work is amply available there. My first attempt, however, (can't remember which novel it was) was
Currently (2009), I find Der Fuchs interesting, though it isn't a page turner. Mueller requires concentrated reading but then provides some poetic images (like mice using children's first teeth to pave their homes) and apparently simple sketches of living with a dictator, whose picture features in the newspaper every day.
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frustrated by her writing style; for lack of the proper English idiom I'd call it the opposite of smooth.Currently (2009), I find Der Fuchs interesting, though it isn't a page turner. Mueller requires concentrated reading but then provides some poetic images (like mice using children's first teeth to pave their homes) and apparently simple sketches of living with a dictator, whose picture features in the newspaper every day.
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LibraryThing member danieljayfriedman
Herta Müller eases us into The Fox Was Ever the Hunter. In its initial chapters, we’re introduced to an unnamed town in an unnamed country in an unnamed year: Müller provides no direct clues about whether the county is democratic or autocratic, capitalist or communist. It is only later that
Müller portrays Adina, a school teacher, and Clara, her friend and factory worker, their relationship with each, their relationships with their lovers, and their relationships with their co-workers. But Romania in the final days of Ceausescu—Romania with its grey, relentless poverty, its pervasive fear, its divisions between the overwhelming power of the governing bureaucrats and the masses—is the real protagonist in The Fox Was Ever the Hunter: “Beyond the flat roof of the café is the park, beyond the park the rooftops are pointed. Here are the streets of the directors and inspectors, the mayors, secret police and army officers. The quiet streets of power, where even the wind is afraid when it starts to blow. And when it does blow it is afraid to eddy. And when it blusters it would rather break its own ribs than a branch.”
A joke can be seditious, but can it be treasonous? In Müller’s Romania, “A little Romanian dies and goes to hell, there’s a lot of pushing and shoving and everybody’s up to their neck in boiling mud. The devil sends the little Romanian off to the last empty space in the corner, and the man goes there and sinks up to his chin. From there he catches sight of a man close to the devil’s throne who’s also standing in boiling mud but only up to his knees. The little Romanian cranes his neck and recognizes Ceausescu. Where’s the justice in that, he asks the devil, that man has a lot more to atone for than I do. You’re right, says the devil, but he’s standing on top of his wife.” In the Romania of The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, the telling of the joke is apparently sufficient to warrant a stay in jail and to raise fears about the safety of to whom the joke was told.
The Fox Was Ever the Hunter is not a novel for those readers needing a clearly delineated plot moving briskly from event to event, not is it a novel for readers needing strong characterizations. But for those readers who want to better understand Ceausecu’s Romania specifically and life in an autocracy, it’s a deeply memorable and haunting read.
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Müller casually let’s us know that the unnamed country is Romania, that impoverished Romania is a dictatorship, and that Ceausescu’s regime is falling after his long reign. Müller portrays Adina, a school teacher, and Clara, her friend and factory worker, their relationship with each, their relationships with their lovers, and their relationships with their co-workers. But Romania in the final days of Ceausescu—Romania with its grey, relentless poverty, its pervasive fear, its divisions between the overwhelming power of the governing bureaucrats and the masses—is the real protagonist in The Fox Was Ever the Hunter: “Beyond the flat roof of the café is the park, beyond the park the rooftops are pointed. Here are the streets of the directors and inspectors, the mayors, secret police and army officers. The quiet streets of power, where even the wind is afraid when it starts to blow. And when it does blow it is afraid to eddy. And when it blusters it would rather break its own ribs than a branch.”
A joke can be seditious, but can it be treasonous? In Müller’s Romania, “A little Romanian dies and goes to hell, there’s a lot of pushing and shoving and everybody’s up to their neck in boiling mud. The devil sends the little Romanian off to the last empty space in the corner, and the man goes there and sinks up to his chin. From there he catches sight of a man close to the devil’s throne who’s also standing in boiling mud but only up to his knees. The little Romanian cranes his neck and recognizes Ceausescu. Where’s the justice in that, he asks the devil, that man has a lot more to atone for than I do. You’re right, says the devil, but he’s standing on top of his wife.” In the Romania of The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, the telling of the joke is apparently sufficient to warrant a stay in jail and to raise fears about the safety of to whom the joke was told.
The Fox Was Ever the Hunter is not a novel for those readers needing a clearly delineated plot moving briskly from event to event, not is it a novel for readers needing strong characterizations. But for those readers who want to better understand Ceausecu’s Romania specifically and life in an autocracy, it’s a deeply memorable and haunting read.
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LibraryThing member LizzieD
Herta Müller writes declarative sentence after declarative sentence. The sentences redeem themselves by brilliant turns of phrase and strange juxtapositions. Scene succeeds scene in dreamlike sequence. The blurb on the back says "kaleidoscope" and kaleidoscope is correct as patterns recur and
Adina is a schoolteacher. Her lover Ilie is a soldier; her former lover Paul is a musician. Her friend Clara works in the factory making wire mesh, and her lover Pavel is a lawyer. One day Adina comes home to find that someone has been in her apartment and razored the tail off the fox rug that she has had since she was ten. It is a warning.
As other reviewers have noted, this is not a book for people who demand straightforward narrative or deep character development. It is an immersive experience. I doubt that I'll reread it; I know that I won't forget it. Thank you, Early Reviewers.
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shift: poplars, faces, eyes, mouths, sunflower seeds, windows. Slowly, slowly the reader is sucked into the terror of life that is something other than human in Ceauşescu's Romania.Adina is a schoolteacher. Her lover Ilie is a soldier; her former lover Paul is a musician. Her friend Clara works in the factory making wire mesh, and her lover Pavel is a lawyer. One day Adina comes home to find that someone has been in her apartment and razored the tail off the fox rug that she has had since she was ten. It is a warning.
As other reviewers have noted, this is not a book for people who demand straightforward narrative or deep character development. It is an immersive experience. I doubt that I'll reread it; I know that I won't forget it. Thank you, Early Reviewers.
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LibraryThing member seidchen
This book took me forever to get into. The run-on declarative sentences just stalled me out, over and over again. It was difficult to sort out the characters too. But there is so much startling and memorable imagery that I kept at it in dogged little bursts. By the end, I was glad I had. It's a
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hard-edged, evocative book. Perhaps for me at another time. Show Less
LibraryThing member janerawoof
Not much of a plot here despite the jacket note picking out what plot there was. That blurb had attracted me in the first place. The plot didn't actually begin until around page 111; why is a fox pelt in the heroine's home cut up little by little? A warning from the secret police? It is revealed
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one of the characters is an agent and is after the heroine, Adina, a teacher. Intriguing for its description of life under Çeaçescu's dictatorship in Romania. Weak on plot. The luscious language and choices of expressions kept me reading! A sample: "The clock inside the cathedral tower advances, another hour is empty and gone; it could be today, it could be tomorrow. Nobody on the banks of the river hears the chiming, the sound quiets when it reaches the water and whimpers when it's gone." The recurring images of poplars at all times of day, twilight, and night and sunflower seeds give the atmosphere of overarching menace and bleakness. Show Less
LibraryThing member akblanchard
According to Wikipedia, The Fox was Ever the Hunter is Nobel Prize winner Herta Muller's novelization of a movie screenplay about the lead-up to the overthrow of Romanian dictator Nikolai Ceausescu. There is not much information about the 1992 film in the Internet Movie Database, but if is
The Fox tells the stories of several characters who live under Ceausescu's oppressive dictatorship: Adina, a schoolteacher, her friend Clara, a factory worker, and Adina's ex-boyfriend Paul, a doctor and musician. Also included are Clara's lover Pavel, soldier Ilie, and political prisoner Albert. What plot there is centers on a fox pelt rug Adina has owned since she was a child. Someone has been sneaking into Adina's apartment and systematically cutting off the animal's appendages. Could the mutilation of the fox rug be a message from the secret police? Could the mutilator be someone close to her acting as an informant? By the time this plot point comes up in the book, the reader already knows which character is connected to the secret police, so there is not much mystery or suspense.
Given its literary pedigree, I thought I would like this book, but I found it dreary and inaccessible. I recommend it only for readers who are very interested in Cold War-era Romanian history.
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anything like the book I imagine that it is rich with visual imagery, but short on action, confusing, and hard to follow.The Fox tells the stories of several characters who live under Ceausescu's oppressive dictatorship: Adina, a schoolteacher, her friend Clara, a factory worker, and Adina's ex-boyfriend Paul, a doctor and musician. Also included are Clara's lover Pavel, soldier Ilie, and political prisoner Albert. What plot there is centers on a fox pelt rug Adina has owned since she was a child. Someone has been sneaking into Adina's apartment and systematically cutting off the animal's appendages. Could the mutilation of the fox rug be a message from the secret police? Could the mutilator be someone close to her acting as an informant? By the time this plot point comes up in the book, the reader already knows which character is connected to the secret police, so there is not much mystery or suspense.
Given its literary pedigree, I thought I would like this book, but I found it dreary and inaccessible. I recommend it only for readers who are very interested in Cold War-era Romanian history.
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LibraryThing member snash
The book is a prose poem with a plot woven in. The quiet consistent terror of oppression is conveyed in the darting shadows, knife-like poplars cutting the sky, sun flower seeds floating in the toilet, and the dissected fox pelt. It's more atmospheric than plot or character driven.
LibraryThing member gpaisley
Muller writes in rather short sentences. Maybe that is how she wrote. Or maybe it is how her work was translated. Perhaps she is trying to convey a sense of bleakness in Romania by avoiding the use of commas. As if commas were in short supply. Like color. Or hope.
Perhaps it is the fault of the
After I had read the first 100 pages (of a 252-page book), one of my children asked me what the book was about. I responded, “I don’t know.” To that point the book had been a collection of vignettes of life in a town in Romania, although they were less than vignettes—they were more like brief glimpses one might see looking out the train window as the train runs through the edge of town. There are no characters—there are people with names, but not personalities. There is no conflict except this sense of struggling to breathe under this pointless existence.
This book may be far better than I deserve. The Nobel committee seems to think so. I am one of those unsophisticated readers who expects a story to actually be that—a story, not an extended mood piece. Mood is valuable—some of my favorite writers are masters of mood—but I need more than that. I need a story.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book with the expectation I would provide an honest review.
Perhaps it is the fault of the
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translator who broke the sentences into choppy, simple statements with drab, unimaginative prose. Or, perhaps that was exactly the point. If it’s possible to write in grainy, blurred black and white, then that is what this is. The prose is flat, lifeless and uninspired. Perhaps that was exactly Muller’s goal: to write in a manner that reflects the bleakness of life under Ceausescu’s rule. If that was her goal, she accomplished it many times over.After I had read the first 100 pages (of a 252-page book), one of my children asked me what the book was about. I responded, “I don’t know.” To that point the book had been a collection of vignettes of life in a town in Romania, although they were less than vignettes—they were more like brief glimpses one might see looking out the train window as the train runs through the edge of town. There are no characters—there are people with names, but not personalities. There is no conflict except this sense of struggling to breathe under this pointless existence.
This book may be far better than I deserve. The Nobel committee seems to think so. I am one of those unsophisticated readers who expects a story to actually be that—a story, not an extended mood piece. Mood is valuable—some of my favorite writers are masters of mood—but I need more than that. I need a story.
Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book with the expectation I would provide an honest review.
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LibraryThing member GaryLeeJones
Nobel Prize winner Horta Muller's __The Fox Was Ever the Hunter__ is a rich, engaging, perceptive novel about living in a police state and finding that you cannot know which of the people you know are true friends, and which are agents of the oppressive state. Even direct, physical observations of
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the sights and sounds around the main character are regularly turned into intriguing but obscure metaphors--such as the book's title. Nothing is certain, nothing is what it seems, or at least it may also be something else, something hidden. The feelings of doubt and even paranoia are well-presented and convincing. When I finished the book, I accepted the idea that the main character was on her way to safety, but could not be certain that she ever would be secure. Disturbingly convincing writing. Show Less
LibraryThing member fizzypops
"God forgive us for being Romanians!"
Midway through the first chapter of this novel, I was struggling to grasp the thread of the story; I was also convinced it might not be for me, and doubted whether I could finish it. But I ended up devouring this in two sittings. It's a stark description of the
Midway through the first chapter of this novel, I was struggling to grasp the thread of the story; I was also convinced it might not be for me, and doubted whether I could finish it. But I ended up devouring this in two sittings. It's a stark description of the
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paranoia of Ceausescu's Romania. Herta Muller writes evocatively about the misery of daily existence in a poor, police state. The poetry and prose isn't for me, but it doesn't detract from a powerful depiction of the crushing grind of Communism in its death throes. Show Less
LibraryThing member yarb
Composed of imagistic vignettes with recurring motifs aplenty. Unfortunately this is at the expense of plot, character, and readerly giving of fucks. You do get a sense of the awfulness of the regime, the secret police, the besetting poverty and paranoia, but it’s all through a watery lens,
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softened and warped. The story is powerful despite the way it’s written. Show Less
Awards
PEN Translation Prize (Longlist — 2017)
Warwick Prize for Women in Translation (Longlist — 2017)
NPR: Books We Love (2016)
Boston Globe Best Book (Fiction — 2016)