The Fox Was Ever the Hunter
Description
"VIVIDLY POETIC . . . MÜLLER HAS EXERCISED HER VOICE WITH A FURY THAT VIBRATES OFF THE PAGE."-THE BOSTON GLOBE
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 the others. One day Adina returns home to discover that her fox-fur rug has had its tail cut off. On another occasion, it's the hind leg. Then a foreleg. The mutilated fur is a taunting sign that she is being watched 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 by fear, where it's hard to tell victim from perpetrator. Once again, Herta Müller 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.
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CONTENTS
1. The way of the apple worm 1
2. The man inside his own hand 14
3. The forelock 18
4. As good as a piece of bread 38
6. A necktie 53
7. Summer entrails 57
8. Days of melons, days of pumpkins 61
9. The cat and the dwarf 68
10. Nuts 84
11. A different silence 94
12. Eardrum infection 103
13. The smallest man carries the biggest cane 111
14. The grass straw in the mouth 115
15. Face without face 118
16. The razor blade 129
17. A fox will step into a trap 132
18. You're not saying anything 139
19. My head is dark 148
20. The fox on the table 158
21. The hand kiss 163
22. The lost shovel 168
23. I can't stand looking at the water when it's so cold out 172
24. There was a time and is no more 175
25. The birthmark 182
26. The wasp game 188
27. The spreading city 196
28. The chamber pot 205
29. The fingernails grow 211
30. Transparent sleep 217
31. A black and white sky 220
32. Frozen raspberries 226
33. I don't know you 232
34. That doesn't matter, doesn't matter at all 236