The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

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 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 show more 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. show less

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 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, show more 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. show less

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 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 show more 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. show less

How can language so plain be so luscious and so alienating. As alienating as it must be to find traces of stolen entry into your most personal spaces, emotional and physical. Is there a clear reason for the book's fragmented details or a firm sense of its plot. Perhaps as much as there is reason or sense behind persecution by the state. How can the sun rise every day and every day make nothing of an appearance from behind the clouds. Until the sky is blue.

Hipnotize edici bir roman, bizi bir kez daha Çavuşesku'nun Romanyasına götürüyor. Klostrofobik bir fabrika, bir çiftçi kasabası, açlık, intihar ve duman çevresinde örgüsünü oluşturuyor. Çingeneler ve gizli polis dışında hiç kimsenin çok fazla bir umuda sahip olmadığı bir "totaliter" kasabada çiftçiler çok yer, çok içerler, çünkü her şeye sahiptiler; az konuşurlar, çünkü çok şey bilmektedirler.Herta Müller "bir" ülkenin maddi ve varoluşsal güçlüklerini şimdiye kadar hiçbir yazarda görülmeyen benzersiz bir şiirsel gerçeklikle yazıya geçirirken çağdaş bir Rabelais'ye dönüşüyor. Herta Müller için "güneş kızgın bir kabak"tır; ele batan "iğnenin anası dünyadaki bütün show more iğneleri doğurmuş olan en eski iğnedir", kavaklar yeşil bıçaklara benzer, ölüm ise "birkaç günlük"tür. Bürlesk olarak da tanımlayabileceğimiz bir ortamda, dikkatler yavaş yavaş biri öğretmen, öteki mühendis olan iki arkadaş üzerinde yoğunlaşır. Kahramanlardan biri bir polis şefine aşıkken öteki bir çingene müzisyenle olan ilişkisi nedeniyle soruşturmaya uğramaktadır.Eleştirmenlerin de belirttiği gibi "Almanca edebiyatta benzeri bulunmayan" bir yazarın ürünü olan Tilki Daha O Zaman Avcıydı'yı herhangi bir roman türüne sokmak kolay olmasa da onu bir "dedektif romanı" olarak tanımlarsak yanlış yapmış olmayız. Romanın bir başka çarpıcı yanı da yüreğin vuruş temposuna benzeyen yazılış ritmi.Yürekteki Hayvan'dan (Telos Yayıncılık, 1997) sonra Tilki Daha O Zaman Avcıydı ile çağdaş romanın keşfine çıkan okurun önünde roman sanatının yepyeni bir ufku açılıyor... show less

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 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 show more ever would be secure. Disturbingly convincing writing. show less

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, softened and warped. The story is powerful despite the way it’s written.