Herta Müller; translated by Philip Boehm
The Fox was Ever the Hunter by Herta Müller, the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, is translated from the German by Philip Boehm. It takes us to late 1980s Rumania, just before the fall of the dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu. The focus is on four friends: Adina, a teacher; Paul, a physician; Clara, a factory worker; and Ilie, a soldier. Pavel, working for the secret police, infiltrates the group when he becomes Clara’s boyfriend.
The narrative consists of a series of staccato images designed to create an atmosphere of oppression, fear, and paranoia. The effect is cumulative as Müller builds layer upon layer of fragmented depictions of a population suffering from malnutrition, hunger, poverty, corruption, distrust, betrayal, and constant surveillance. The children are malnourished and disfigured, their hands covered with warts, their teeth black. They are taught to be cautious at a young age. One child tells Adina his mother warns him about the pervasive presence of drawers with listening ears to be found even in trees and fences. The natural environment assumes a quality of foreboding. The town’s poplar trees are variously described as menacing. Pollution and industrial waste run rampant. The animals are so hungry a cat will devour her own young.
The atmosphere throughout is surreal. There is no respite in sleep because even dreams are the stuff of nightmares. The characters speak in whispers, observe events in silence, and go through the motions of living. They are numb to suicides; to the sound of shots fired at someone trying to escape by swimming across the Danube; to the ever-watchful eye of the secret police; to disappearances and interrogations; to a man with a hatchet blade lodged in his skull; and to Ceausescu’s larger-than-life image leering at them from every corner.
The central image is the fox rug in Adina’s apartment. She comes home to find someone has severed the fox’s appendage. One day a tail is cut off; another day, it’s a hind leg; and then it’s a foreleg. The goal is to intimidate her by letting her know the security service has unfettered access to her apartment and that she and her friends are under surveillance. Big Brother is everywhere. And Big Brother is watching her.
This collage of fractured images, fragments, bits and pieces of daily life coalesce to form a haunting and terrifying portrayal of Romania under the Ceausescu. The constant shifts and disjointed narrative work to present life from all its splintered angles until a totality of the experience emerges. While the style and content make this a challenging read, the effort is worth it for those interested in understanding the spiritual, moral, and physical suffocation of life under a brutal dictatorship.