Product Description
In September 2001 Alexander Umnitzer, who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, leaves behind his ailing father to fly to Mexico, where his grandparents lived as exiles in the 1940s.
Thus begins Ruge’s vividly drawn, multi-generational saga. A series of vinettes move forward and back in time, creating a panoramic view of the family’s history: from Alexander’s grandparents’ return to the GDR to build the socialist state, to his father’s decade spent in a gulag for criticizing the Soviet regime, to his son’s desire to leave the political struggles of the twentieth century in the past.
With wisdom, humor, and great empathy, Eugen Ruge draws on his own family history as he masterfully brings to life the tragic intertwining of politics, love, and family under the East German regime, a country that has vanished into memory and history.
Thus begins Ruge’s vividly drawn, multi-generational saga. A series of vinettes move forward and back in time, creating a panoramic view of the family’s history: from Alexander’s grandparents’ return to the GDR to build the socialist state, to his father’s decade spent in a gulag for criticizing the Soviet regime, to his son’s desire to leave the political struggles of the twentieth century in the past.
With wisdom, humor, and great empathy, Eugen Ruge draws on his own family history as he masterfully brings to life the tragic intertwining of politics, love, and family under the East German regime, a country that has vanished into memory and history.
Reviews/Praise
—Library Journal [starred review]
“[Simon Vance’s] tone is animated, and his phrasing is crisp.”
—AudioFile
“Thoughtful and reflective. . . . Highly recommended for both personal and public library audiobook fiction collections.”
—Library Bookwatch
“A shrewd and very knowing novel, slippery with the truth and packed tight with compressed tension, and written by a talented new voice.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Combining dense, full-bodied storytelling with an enlightening sense of modern history.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Ruge takes full advantage of the varying viewpoints to display, impressively, the density of family.”
—Kirkus
“A deeply plaintive examination of personal and political tragedy.”
—Booklist [HC starred review]
“A novel as important in the whole literature of the Cold War and its aftermath as anything written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn.”
—Philip Kerr
“A novel full of the wisdom of experience.”
—Die Zeit
“Ruge’s characters have a fully rounded existence beyond their own period. . . . The time is ripe for this clear, humorous, and understanding look at the subject.”
—Die Tageszeitung
“Outstanding. . . . A fascinating inside view of the GDR.”
—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“The real miracle of this novel . . . lies in how he does each of his characters justice, in precise, unpretentious language, based entirely on observations and the importance of things, smells, [and] gestures. There is no reason to mourn the GDR as a state, but there are a lot of reasons to tell the story of successful or wasted lives with fine black humor.”
—Die Welt
Author Bio
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