3.5
The Village on the Edge of the World
ByPublisher Description
"A riveting, haunting, incisive, and melancholy document that provides the ultimate example of a writer bearing witness and holding evil to account."—The Wall Street Journal
A Nobel laureate presents a brilliant, discomfiting reflection on literary life defined by the brutality of Ceausescu’s Romania.
From her childhood in Romania, in a village “as small as a thimble on the edge of the world,” through to life in exile in Germany, Herta Müller's story unspools against the tumultuous history of Romania in the latter half of the twentieth century. Here, the Nobel Prize laureate reflects on cultural history, memory, and trauma, and on what it was to live and write under Ceausescu's regime. She revisits the friendships that buckled under the weight of fear and paranoia; the experience of being surveilled and interrogated; and on the unique blend of fear and tedium borne through life under totalitarianism.
The Village on the Edge of the World is a book that chronicles the minutiae of life under both fascism and the Soviet Union, while charting the existential questions posed by these regimes of the twentieth century—and how they remain with us in the twenty-first. This is a powerful and evocative reflection on life behind the Iron Curtain.
A Nobel laureate presents a brilliant, discomfiting reflection on literary life defined by the brutality of Ceausescu’s Romania.
From her childhood in Romania, in a village “as small as a thimble on the edge of the world,” through to life in exile in Germany, Herta Müller's story unspools against the tumultuous history of Romania in the latter half of the twentieth century. Here, the Nobel Prize laureate reflects on cultural history, memory, and trauma, and on what it was to live and write under Ceausescu's regime. She revisits the friendships that buckled under the weight of fear and paranoia; the experience of being surveilled and interrogated; and on the unique blend of fear and tedium borne through life under totalitarianism.
The Village on the Edge of the World is a book that chronicles the minutiae of life under both fascism and the Soviet Union, while charting the existential questions posed by these regimes of the twentieth century—and how they remain with us in the twenty-first. This is a powerful and evocative reflection on life behind the Iron Curtain.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Village on the Edge of the World Reviews
3.5
“A personal work from Herta Muller, an insight into her early life that is interspersed with quotes from her novels. It provides interesting insight into what life was like for a young, female, German writer within the repressive Socialist regime in Romania. It has some deep descriptions of how Muller was treated by the Securitate, including revelations from her own Securitate file.”
About Herta Müller
Herta Müller was born on August 17, 1953 in Banat, Romania. In 1987, she emigrated to Germany and has lived in Berlin ever since. She is the author of The Land of Green Plums, The Appointment, The Hunger Angel, and The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, among other works. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009.
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