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The Hunger Angel
The Hunger Angel: A Novel | Herta Müller
7 posts | 7 read | 21 to read
A masterful new novel from the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize, hailed for depicting the "landscape of the dispossessed" with "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose" (Nobel Prize Committee)It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo would spend the next five years in a coke processing plant, shoveling coal, lugging bricks, mixing mortar, and battling the relentless calculus of hunger that governed the labor colony: one shovel load of coal is worth one gram of bread.In her new novel, Nobel laureate Herta Müller calls upon her unique combination of poetic intensity and dispassionate precision to conjure the distorted world of the labor camp in all its physical and moral absurdity. She has given Leo the language to express the inexpressible, as hunger sharpens his senses into an acuity that is both hallucinatory and profound. In scene after disorienting scene, the most ordinary objects accrue tender poignancy as they acquire new purpose—a gramophone box serves as a suitcase, a handkerchief becomes a talisman, an enormous piece of casing pipe functions as a lovers' trysting place. The heart is reduced to a pump, the breath mechanized to the rhythm of a swinging shovel, and coal, sand, and snow have a will of their own. Hunger becomes an insatiable angel who haunts the camp, but also a bare-knuckled sparring partner, delivering blows that keep Leo feeling the rawest connection to life.Müller has distilled Leo's struggle into words of breathtaking intensity that take us on a journey far beyond the Gulag and into the depths of one man's soul.
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jveezer
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Pickpick

Müller tells a tale of the marginalized and dispossessed in this novel of the WWII era. Drawing from the experiences of her ethnic German family and friends who were a minority living in Romania, she highlights the experiences of those who were sent to the forced labor camps by Stalin to rebuild the USSR. Her novel clearly shows how hunger and harsh imprisonment never really leaves the psyche of those fortunate enough to be released. #ReadWomen

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sarahu
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It's Women in Translation month- these picks are way too ambitious, but I intend to try to get through them in August 🤥#WITMonth #august

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KVanRead
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#photoadaynov16 Here are two #setineasterneurope at opposite ends of World War II that both blew me away. @RealLifeReading

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Kathrin
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This book is not a gruesome recounting of events in the work camps. It's more subtle than that. The episodes of five years of "living" in a camp after WWII with a lot of strenuous physical work and very little to eat to sustain it. Also, not knowing when and if you'll ever get to go home. The writing is beautiful and feels dream like, but at the same time she is able to convey the desperation, the oppression and this never ending hunger.

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Kathrin
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Day 3 of staycation! Today I am finally cracking open this gem by Nobel Price winning author Herta Müller. I received the book as a gift many many years ago from my aunt and uncle. It's still shrink wrapped...

Laura317 This sounds really good! 8y
19 likes1 comment
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BookishFeminist
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My #WWW is Herta Müller, & it also happens to be her birthday! Müller is a German-Romanian author, poet, & essayist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her writing is profound & affecting, focusing on the effects of terror & violence under the repressive regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in Communist Romania, which she lived through herself. Her stories often depict living as an oppressed German minority in Romania. ?????? #BookishBirthdays

Yamich49 Great WWW! I'll have to add her to my list. Shoot I forgot hashtags on mine! 8y
readinginthedark Fascinating! 8y
See All 8 Comments
ramyasbookshelf Haven't read a single book by her! Time to change that I guess! Where would you recommend I start? 8y
KVanRead @BookishFeminist @readinginthedark The Hunger Angel was my pick for book club and we all loved it. I was so impressed by her writing. My book club friend just read The Land of Green Plums and said it was excellent. 8y
ErickaS_Flyleafunfurled Thanks for the introduction - Im unfamiliar with her, but that will soon be remedied!! 8y
BookishFeminist @ramyasbookshelf The Hunger Angel is the one she's gotten the most accolades and is the most known for- that would be a great place to start! 8y
BookishFeminist @ErickaS_Flyleafunfurled.com No problem! I haven't read much by her but want to remedy that as well 8y
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