2.5/5I didn't dislike this book but I couldn't say I really liked it either.Hunger Angel is the story of a in-the-closet teen sent to a labour camp at the tail end of the second world war.The characters all feel like dreams (which actually is a statement to the skill of the author) and it is beautifully written - more like poetry than an novel. Given that the story was disjointed and confusing (I swear I waiting the whole book to see if things would 'come together' in the end...which they never did). This book would appeal to poetry readers or those who read purely for the style of the writing. When Müller was awarded the Nobel prize in 2009, the Anglophone world was left scratching their heads as to why this German-Romanian novelist deserved the accolade over their American favourites. Unfavourably, critics and media denounced the Nobel Eurocentric and pegged Müller as an obscure Eastern European writer without having read any of her works.But The Hunger Angel (or as literally translated, 'Breath-Swing') is undoubtedly one of the most powerful, lasting works I have read this year, unflinching in its portrayal of Leo, a 17 year old German who is sent to a forced-labour concentration camp under the Soviet Union. Mindless mechanical drudgery and never-ending hunger permeate the five years Leo spends in the barracks, gripped under the physical and mental anguish of Ceausescu's regime. The book is gripping as it is penetrating, casting its own harrowing hunger angel onto the reader. Just as the personified hunger angel in the camp is all-consuming, and a consistent harbinger of disease and decay for the prisoners, does the book never let go from the onset. Every detail of the camp is mapped out - the whole world is described in intimate, sensual detail that borders on a terribly beautiful poetry. The lice, the black poplars, the coal, the hunger angel all become images of Leo's life - a life that is based on the real-life poet Oskar Pastior, for whom Leo takes after.Stylistically the novel is a triumph too. Müller's writing is both refreshingly contemporary and abstract but grounded in the realities of the narrative, and her prose marks in blisteringly clear terms the struggle between survival and suffering. Müller asks what it means to be hungry, to be oppressed, and perhaps most importantly what it means to remember trauma from the point of view of a great writer.
What do You think about L'altalena Del Respiro (2009)?
Excellent book. Very deep emotionally, abstract, and some humor in the midst of grief.
—shaeyi93
Ich krieg es nicht zuende. Zuviele Körperausscheidungen für meinen Geschmack.
—hassan
