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Another gem from the Nobel Prize-winning author (2009) of The Hunger Angel and The Appointment. She writes about life in Romania under the communist dictator Ceausescu (1965-1989). Muller grew up as a member of Romania’s large German minority and she writes in German.



A group of young people from impoverished rural backgrounds are thrown together in college dorms in the big city � the young women, six to a room. The oppression of the dictator is everywhere and talk of his health is constant. Rumors (hopes) of his illnesses, the more severe the better, are talked about every day. One of the women kills herself and that is followed by compulsory attendance at a meeting in an auditorium to admonish her memory. The rules and regulations, the spying and the reporting, the fear of being followed, the inability to really trust anyone else or to safely hide anything for fear of search is stifling:

“We sat together at a table, but our fear stayed locked within each of our heads, just as we’d brought it to our meetings. We laughed a lot, to hide it from each other. But fear always finds an out. If you control your face, it slips into your voice. If you manage to keep a grip on your face and your voice, as if they were dead wood, it will slip out through your fingers. It will pass through your skin and lie there. You can see it lying around on objects close by.�

The narrator is a young woman and her only escape is that she hangs out with a group of young men in a summer house reading banned books. The thrill of discovery is the only thing that counteracts the fear and the boredom. Resist or die: they chose resistance and experience betrayal.



Top photo from Bucharestlife.net
Bottom photo from Kami's blog Mywanderlust.pl