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Müller is never an easy read, but I find her spare prose and bizarre vision of the world both impressive and deeply disturbing. Some reviewers have described this as a book about madness. Perhaps. The madness, if one can properly call it that, results from political dislocation and alienation. Irene, a Romanian German has fled her homeland to take up residence in West Germany, much like Müller herself. She becomes involved with three different men, none of whom seem particularly fond of her, and she wanders lost in her new, rather barren landscape. But for me it is always Müller's peculiar verbal style that engages. Passages like these appear on every page:

"The distance was in the eyes, too. And also later, when the refugees weren't walking in Flottenstrasse anymore. When they went to the post office, or talked too loudly on the phone from a rough neighborhood. And wrote signs of life on cards to another country" (p. 21).

"Thomas knew this boy with the peaked cap. He lived in every city. He was one of the many you lose track of while they are still alive" (p. 62).

"She opened her mouth as if to yawn. She didn't yawn. It was her way to line up the words in her mouth before she spoke" (p. 65).

Müller is a writer who sends me back to my German textbooks. Is there a greater compliment a reader can pay a writer than to want to read her in the original language?