The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, Herta Muller
The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, Herta Muller
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The Fox Was Ever the Hunter
A Novel

Author: Herta Müller, Philip Boehm

Narrator: Suzanne Toren

Unabridged: 7 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/10/2016

Synopsis

An early masterpiece from the winner of the Nobel Prize, hailed as the laureate of life under totalitarianismRomania, the last months of the Ceaușescu regime. Adina is a young schoolteacher, Paul is a musician, and Clara works in a wire factory. Pavel is Clara’s lover, but one of them works for the secret police and is reporting on the whole group.One day Adina returns home to discover that her fox fur rug has had its tail cut off. On another occasion it’s the hind leg. Then it’s a foreleg. The mutilated fur is a sign that she is being tracked by the secret police—the fox was ever the hunter.Images of photographic precision combine into a kaleidoscope of terror as Adina and her friends struggle to keep mind and body intact in a world pervaded by complicity and permeated with fear, where it’s hard to tell victim from perpetrator. In The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, Herta Müller once again uses language that displays the “concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose”—as the Swedish Academy noted upon awarding her the Nobel Prize—to create a hauntingly cinematic portrayal of the corruption of the soul under totalitarianism.

About Herta Müller

Herta Müller is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the European Literature Prize. She is the author of, among other books, The Hunger Angel and The Land of Green Plums. Born in Romania in 1953, Müller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceauşescu’s secret police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin.

About Philip Boehm

Philip Boehm has translated numerous works from German and Polish by writers including Ingeborg Bachmann, Franz Kafka, and Stefan Chwin. He lives in St. Louis, where he is the artistic director of Upstream Theater.

About Suzanne Toren

Suzanne Toren, award-winning narrator, has over thirty years of experience in narration. She was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine in 2019. She has won the American Foundation for the Blind’s Scourby Award for Narrator of the Year, AudioFile magazine named her the 2009 Best Voice in Nonfiction & Culture, and she is the recipient of multiple Earphones Awards. She performs on and off Broadway and in regional theaters and has appeared on Law & Order and in various soap operas.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ioana on May 23, 2016

Perhaps I was expecting a bit much of this book in imagining it would touch my soul in a most profound and resonating way. See, The Fox Was Ever the Hunter is the story of a teacher's life (1) during the last few year's of Ceausescu's communist regime (2; 1980s - place and decade of my birth), and m......more

Goodreads review by Alexander on March 19, 2024

Eine erstarrte Welt in parataktischen Bildern. Der halsstarrige Klang des Unentkommbaren – die Welt in Scherben als Dichtung. Inhalt: 5/5 Sterne (intensives Bedrohungsszenario) Form: 5/5 Sterne (Sprache nahe am Schmerzlaut) Komposition: 3/5 Sterne (schnelle, harte Kollagen-Schnitt-Technik) Leseerlebnis......more

Goodreads review by Mike on June 07, 2016

I had recently moved to Europe in 1989 and was celebrating my first Christmas there when Ceausescu was killed. I was in Western Europe, and so watched from afar, but still, the mood was different than it was in the states, with seemingly daily revolutions somewhere in Eastern Europe. I remember bein......more

Goodreads review by Greg on July 08, 2017

Less a novel and more a very long prose poem, I can understand how some might love it. I’m not one of them but the final chapters gave me mixed feelings. Atmospherics and imagery about life behind the Iron Curtain dominate the story. It has promise. I get it. I just didn’t appreciate it as perhaps I......more

Goodreads review by Oana on February 18, 2015

Daca la inceput am urat felul in care este scrisa cartea, pe parcurs am fost atat de prinsa de imagini, simboluri si de cititul printre randuri incat am trecut peste. Herta Muller descrie foarte bine atmosfera comunista, foamea, frigul, si mai ales teama. Si la fel de bine reda si primele zile timis......more

Quotes

“The Fox Was Ever the Hunter is itself a collage of images, stories, and fragments of forbidden songs. Müller arranges them in such a way that the reader gets a sense of how terrifying and rife with betrayal life in Romania was during the end of ­Ceausescu’s regime…when the collage is completed, the reader understands that each and every one of Müller’s stories, every flight of luscious language and every brutal fact, has been necessary in depicting a society torn to pieces and tasked, with the curtains finally open and the light streaming in, with putting those pieces back together to make sense of it all. New York Times Book Review

“An air of Soviet-era menace engulfs The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, Herta Müller’s remarkable novel…it draws on what she suffered while clenched in the jaws of one of history’s most notorious dictatorships. But she infuses characters and events with surreal elements and heightened levels of metaphor that make this much more than a roman à clef…Here, dreams become extensions of life, or life itself is a dream; they are cut, at any rate, from one and the same fabric, consistently lurid and terrifying.” NPR

“Müller slowly builds suspense as she draws on memories of the stark landscape, the personal betrayals, the state brutality, the daily dread and tedium. Her prose—as poetic as it is blunt—works like a prism, shattering and illuminating a world that is always watching, waiting. ‘Everything that shines also sees,’ runs a refrain in this dark collage, which glints with fear—and with beauty.” Atlantic

“Atmospheric, lyrical…An essential work of post–Iron Curtain literature and a harrowing portrait of life under suspicion.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Awards

  • Millions.com Pick
  • A Flavorwire Pick
  • Kirkus Reviews Pick
  • NPR Best Book
  • PEN Translation Prize
  • Boston Globe Pick
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