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93rd out of 148 books
—
108 voters
The Hunger Angel
A masterful new novel from the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize, hailed for depicting the "landscape of the dispossessed" with "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose" (Nobel Prize Committee)
It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo would spend the next five ye...more
It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to deport him to a camp in the Soviet Union. Leo would spend the next five ye...more
Hardcover, 304 pages
Published
April 24th 2012
by Metropolitan Books
(first published 2009)
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إسرافٌ في الوصف والتفاصيل الصغيرة , في الثلج الذي يشبه ندف القطن , أو نثار السكر المطحون فوق قطعة حلوى , أو ... الكثير من التفاصيل ولاشيء يحدث تحديداً . ثمة الكثير من التأملات , في الجوع والحنين والجوع مرةً أخرى . وثمة الكثير من الإطالة والملل في بعض المقاطع .. ولا أدري أهوَ سرُّ الكاتبة أم أزمة المُترجم !
أفضل الفصول وأقلها إملالاً وأجملها بالنسبةٍ لي هو ما جاء في ال30 صفحة الأخيرة , ولا أعرف أكان ذلك لأنني احتجت لوقتٍ استعيد فيه حماسي للكتاب بعد أن تركته كل هذا الوقت أو أن هذه الفصول هي الألذ ح...more
أفضل الفصول وأقلها إملالاً وأجملها بالنسبةٍ لي هو ما جاء في ال30 صفحة الأخيرة , ولا أعرف أكان ذلك لأنني احتجت لوقتٍ استعيد فيه حماسي للكتاب بعد أن تركته كل هذا الوقت أو أن هذه الفصول هي الألذ ح...more
Beautiful, poetic writing. Muller's style and subject (WWII Romania and Russian deportation camps)are pretty unfamiliar territory to me, but themes are similar to those I've found in other stories about the soul-stealing power of dislocation and internment.
The personification of HUNGER reminded me of Elie Wiesel and Knute Hamson's writing. Strangely, I am also reading 'The Book Thief' which is narrated by DEATH, a character pivotal to that story and so many others, even if unintentional.
Mul...more
The personification of HUNGER reminded me of Elie Wiesel and Knute Hamson's writing. Strangely, I am also reading 'The Book Thief' which is narrated by DEATH, a character pivotal to that story and so many others, even if unintentional.
Mul...more
Rumänien 1945: Der Zweite Weltkrieg ist endlich zu Ende. Die deutschstämmige Bevölkerung muss nun mit ihrer Arbeitskraft die Reparationen für die entstandenen Kriegsschäden bezahlen. Auf Stalins Befehl hin werden alle arbeitsfähigen Männer und Frauen von 17 bis 45 Jahren in Arbeitslager deportiert. So auch der siebzehnjährige Leopold Auberg, für den dieser Tapentenwechsel zunächst ein Abenteuer ist, eine Abwechslung im ständig gleichbleibenden Alltag. Im Lager erlebt er fünf Jahre harte Arbeit,...more
Won this in a goodreads giveway.
I write too much for other reasons to ever give reviews any effort, so:
Like watching a silk string coil and uncoil in the dirt.
Like the slow waves of grass.
Leo is nothing but his voice, his observation, his desires, his exhaustion and hunger, his memories. As the years drain by he becomes more and more indistinguishable from what he describes, but never completely, instead more like the shadow of a cloud passing by, and then later the land beneath the shadow.
Like...more
I write too much for other reasons to ever give reviews any effort, so:
Like watching a silk string coil and uncoil in the dirt.
Like the slow waves of grass.
Leo is nothing but his voice, his observation, his desires, his exhaustion and hunger, his memories. As the years drain by he becomes more and more indistinguishable from what he describes, but never completely, instead more like the shadow of a cloud passing by, and then later the land beneath the shadow.
Like...more
This is the novel that won Muller the Nobel Prize for Literature (I believe). This is one of the most profound, poetic pieces of fiction I've ever come across in my life. Outstanding on all levels: intellectually, emotionally, technically. Probably not suitable for most American readers...or, rather, it's tough for me to imagine many American readers would want to initially pick up this novel ( I honestly don't know many Americans in my circle who have read any Solzhenitsyn, and this novel follo...more
I would add an extra half star to my rating. I love literary historical fiction, and at first this novel reminded me of "The Siege." But the author's poetics tended to distance me from the characters and situations rather than draw me in.
"A cattle-train wagon blues, a kilometre song of time set in motion."
It's an interesting choice of words Müller has her protagonist make to describe the long train ride at the end of World War II, packed in like sardines, the long cold way to the camp in the East. After all, the blues arose from a culture where the people had been deliberately robbed of their own languages and had them replaced with a rudimentary one, with the idea that they wouldn't be able to say - and by extension think - muc...more
It's an interesting choice of words Müller has her protagonist make to describe the long train ride at the end of World War II, packed in like sardines, the long cold way to the camp in the East. After all, the blues arose from a culture where the people had been deliberately robbed of their own languages and had them replaced with a rudimentary one, with the idea that they wouldn't be able to say - and by extension think - muc...more
Книгами коротать время. Делать жизнь прозрачно-невидимой для той, которая вовлеченно наблюдает за всем изнутри (Heute war ich mir lieber nicht begegnet, лучше бы я себя сегодня не встречала). Книгой Герты Мюллер я оправдала свой выходной. Тоненькой неприметной книжечкой Кристы Вулф я обернула короткие промежутки времени в транспорте (туда-сюда, туда-сюда) в цельный кусок тающего времени, времени которое не вернуть. Вишни, похожие на кончики языков, уводить кого-то глубже в парк, ловить его руку,...more
Herta Müller, has written a stunning, haunting novel about suffering and survival in the Soviet work camps following World War II. In The Hunger Angel, Müller presents us with Leo Auberg, a young, closeted gay man in German controlled Europe. One day, late in the war, he is picked up suddenly and shipped off to a labor camp in Russia where he suffers with fellow inmates through cold, harsh working conditions and, most acutely, hunger.
In spare prose, Müller dramatizes the constant struggle that L...more
In spare prose, Müller dramatizes the constant struggle that L...more
In't kort: de jonge Leopold woont met zijn Duits gezin in Roemenië, ten tijde van de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Wanneer de Sovjets Roemenië binnentrekken in 1944, deporteren ze elke jonge Duitser naar werkkampen in de Sovjetunie. Leopold is één van hen. Vijf jaar lang moet hij dwangarbeid verrichten, tot hij uiteindelijk toch naar huis mag terugkeren. Maar thuis is geen echte 'thuis' meer voor hem…
Mijn oordeel: Herta Müller is de jongste Nobelprijswinnaar. Dit boek is haar meest recente en kreeg in de...more
Mijn oordeel: Herta Müller is de jongste Nobelprijswinnaar. Dit boek is haar meest recente en kreeg in de...more
Leo Auberg was just seventeen when two policemen went from house to house with a list. They were rounding up people to take them to a prison camp in the Soviet Union. Leo traveled by train to the camp. Once there, he spent five grueling years in the camp. Although, Leo did not know it yet, he would have a companion with him. HIs companion would be known as the "hunger angel".
Ms. Muller is a profilic writer. She described in much detail the hunger that Leo was experiencing. I wuld have to say tho...more
Ms. Muller is a profilic writer. She described in much detail the hunger that Leo was experiencing. I wuld have to say tho...more
Review from Paula Day
I am embarrassed to say that I had not read anything from Nobel laureate Herta Muller before receiving this book to review. Now that I am familiar with her poetic, haunted style, I will be seeking more of her work.
In The Hunger Angel, Muller’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009, we met Leo, a young Romanian poet shipped to a Soviet labor camp in 1945. He works for five years in the camp, and he cannot escape the constant heavy labor and the cons...more
I am embarrassed to say that I had not read anything from Nobel laureate Herta Muller before receiving this book to review. Now that I am familiar with her poetic, haunted style, I will be seeking more of her work.
In The Hunger Angel, Muller’s first novel since winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009, we met Leo, a young Romanian poet shipped to a Soviet labor camp in 1945. He works for five years in the camp, and he cannot escape the constant heavy labor and the cons...more
Dos eventos literários que aguçam a minha curiosidade, dois fazem mais barulho.
O primeiro é a FLIP. Sempre acho interessante saber quais autores vêm e tentar ler algo que tenham escrito. Em 2011, tive excelentes surpresas com o fantástico o remorso de baltazar serapião de valter hugo mãe e o denso Verbos Auxiliares do Coração de Péter Esterházy. Ambos estiveram em Paraty este ano.
O outro evento é a concessão do Nobel de Literatura. Tenho menos curiosidade sobre os vencedores do Nobel porque os c...more
O primeiro é a FLIP. Sempre acho interessante saber quais autores vêm e tentar ler algo que tenham escrito. Em 2011, tive excelentes surpresas com o fantástico o remorso de baltazar serapião de valter hugo mãe e o denso Verbos Auxiliares do Coração de Péter Esterházy. Ambos estiveram em Paraty este ano.
O outro evento é a concessão do Nobel de Literatura. Tenho menos curiosidade sobre os vencedores do Nobel porque os c...more
When Herta Müller received a much-deserved Nobel Prize in 2009, she was lauded for her portrayal of "the landscape of the dispossessed." These words are a very fitting description of "The Hunger Angel," a tribute to her fellow German-Romanians, who were deported to Siberian prison camps after the war for their supposed or real collaboration with Hitler's Germany. Müller's mother spent five years in such a camp, but the protagonist here is a young man, whose story is apparently based upon a detai...more
This is my first exposure to the works of recent Nobel Prize Winner Herta Müller. I will definitely be reading whatever else I can find with her name on the by-line.
The fact that this is a fictional novel based on actual events makes it hard to digest (pun intended lol). The Hunger Angel is episodic in its structure and the author employs a great deal of poetic prose imagery in depicting the physical suffering of the characters in the Russian post WWII forced labor camps that German Romanians we...more
The fact that this is a fictional novel based on actual events makes it hard to digest (pun intended lol). The Hunger Angel is episodic in its structure and the author employs a great deal of poetic prose imagery in depicting the physical suffering of the characters in the Russian post WWII forced labor camps that German Romanians we...more
May 30, 2011
Julia Boechat Machado
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2000s,
books-i-own
É impossível ler um livro sobre um campo de concetração e não pensar em Primo Levi e sua obra pioneira. O contraste é particularmente interessante nesse caso, porque a obra de Levi fala sobre a recusa a ser desumanizado. Ele escreve seu nome em seu prato se sopa, não seu número, ele recita Dante e ele nunca deixa de ser surpreender com o que o homem pode fazer com o homem.
Leopold Auberg, o protagonista de Tudo o Que Tenho Levo Comigo, tem somente 17 anos, e a princípio não acha ruim ser mandado...more
Leopold Auberg, o protagonista de Tudo o Que Tenho Levo Comigo, tem somente 17 anos, e a princípio não acha ruim ser mandado...more
I'm not in the mindset to read this now and unfortunately, my digital review copy expires in 3 days. I don't see myself finishing it any time soon. However, I'll leave what I can about it in the event that I return to it:
This is a fictional account of boy’s experience in a camp in post-WWII Soviet Russia. The retelling of 17 year old Leo’s five years in the camp is, at times, very disorienting due to the fact that Muller is artfully writing through the character’s hallucinatory hunger and exhaus...more
This is a fictional account of boy’s experience in a camp in post-WWII Soviet Russia. The retelling of 17 year old Leo’s five years in the camp is, at times, very disorienting due to the fact that Muller is artfully writing through the character’s hallucinatory hunger and exhaus...more
Non ho trovato nel libro "L'altalena del respiro" la stessa forza rivoluzionaria che sbaraglia i canoni consolidati, quella potenza che opprime e soffoca come un macigno che mi aveva travolto leggendo "L'albero delle prugne verdi".
Però, superando la freddezza iniziale, ho ritrovato la cima della corda intagliata di metafore e immagini che compongono lo stile unico, personalissimo della Muller e grazie ad esso sono riuscita ad afferrare esattamente l'essenza, la grana più fine e profonda di ques...more
The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller is a German novel taking place in a Soviet forced labor camp at the end of World War II. Ms. Müller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Leo Auberg was 17 when he was picked up for a 5 year sentence (or honor) serving in a soviet forced labor camp. The laborers at the camp were getting food at a minimal and “exercise” aplenty without the need to be concerned about hygiene.
Leo shovels coal, hauls mortar, and does other difficult jobs but the on...more
Leo Auberg was 17 when he was picked up for a 5 year sentence (or honor) serving in a soviet forced labor camp. The laborers at the camp were getting food at a minimal and “exercise” aplenty without the need to be concerned about hygiene.
Leo shovels coal, hauls mortar, and does other difficult jobs but the on...more
Como Muller nos dice en el epílogo de “Todo lo que tengo lo llevo conmigo”, originalmente éste iba a ser un libro escrito entre el poeta Oskar Pastior y ella sobre los recuerdos de Oskar, sin embargo, la muerte de Pastior en 2006 la dejó sin compañero y con un montón de cuadernos de notas. Finalmente, en 2008, la escritora decidió llevar a término el proyecto y escribió el libro combinando su extraordinaria imaginación, las memorias del poeta y las de su propia madre quien, como él, pasó cinco a...more
Esta Herta Muller escreve bem que se farta.
Este livro é a odisseia de mais um Leopold - não, este não é Bloom. A odisseia deste Leo é a luta travada com a fome num campo de trabalho Russo - a chama que o vai mantendo vivo é a ideia de regresso a casa (como nas outras duas odisseias ... Como em todas as odisseias que porventura possam existir)
Excerto:
"O tribunal do pão não processa, castiga. A fronteira zero não reconhece artigos, não carece de leis. Ela é a lei, porque o anjo da da fome também...more
Este livro é a odisseia de mais um Leopold - não, este não é Bloom. A odisseia deste Leo é a luta travada com a fome num campo de trabalho Russo - a chama que o vai mantendo vivo é a ideia de regresso a casa (como nas outras duas odisseias ... Como em todas as odisseias que porventura possam existir)
Excerto:
"O tribunal do pão não processa, castiga. A fronteira zero não reconhece artigos, não carece de leis. Ela é a lei, porque o anjo da da fome também...more
Feb 24, 2013
Pamela J
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
literature-not-written-in-english
Mueller, as with other works I've read by her, endows her first-person narrator with a language for his basic (food, shelter, clothing) depravity in a Russian camp. While the gulag conditions are tragic and inhumane, Leo's language is wonderfully poetic. His will to survive is palpable in his inventive language and word play.
اما گنج ها وجود خارجی دارند.در این مورد حق با تورپریکولیچ بود.
بازگشت برای من به وطن یک شانس در خور ستایش دائمی بود. یک چرخش دایمی که
برای هر کثافتی شروع به چرخیدن میکرد.من راهمچون موم در دست داشت.همانطور
که گنچ هایم که نه توان نگه داشتنشان و نه توان خلاص شدن از شرشان را داشتم. بیش از شصت سال است که از گنج هایم استفاده میکنم. آنها سست و سمج، مانوس و چندش آور، فراموش نشدنی و کینه توزانه ، کهنه و نو هستند و همگی جهیزیه ی آرتورپریکولیچ اند و تفاوت قائل شدن بین آنها کار من نیست، وقتی می شمارمشان به تلو...more
بازگشت برای من به وطن یک شانس در خور ستایش دائمی بود. یک چرخش دایمی که
برای هر کثافتی شروع به چرخیدن میکرد.من راهمچون موم در دست داشت.همانطور
که گنچ هایم که نه توان نگه داشتنشان و نه توان خلاص شدن از شرشان را داشتم. بیش از شصت سال است که از گنج هایم استفاده میکنم. آنها سست و سمج، مانوس و چندش آور، فراموش نشدنی و کینه توزانه ، کهنه و نو هستند و همگی جهیزیه ی آرتورپریکولیچ اند و تفاوت قائل شدن بین آنها کار من نیست، وقتی می شمارمشان به تلو...more
Šis darbs manī aizķēra kādu stīgu, pāris dienas pēc izlasīšanas biju ne savā ādā.
Šī ir grāmata par to, kā izsalkums maina cilvēku. Šokējoši nelikās, iespējams tāpēc, ka šī vēstures lappuse ir mācīta skolā, par to ir lasīts un dzirdēts no cilvēkiem, kas ko līdzīgu ir piedzīvojuši. Kaut arī mēs zinām, cik šajās nometnēs bija grūti, vienaldzīgu neatstās nevienu Leo iekšējo sajūtu apraksts par to, kā bada eņģelis skatās pār plecu un izsalkums ir tas, kas nosaka viņa rīcību attiecīgā situācijā, kā da...more
Šī ir grāmata par to, kā izsalkums maina cilvēku. Šokējoši nelikās, iespējams tāpēc, ka šī vēstures lappuse ir mācīta skolā, par to ir lasīts un dzirdēts no cilvēkiem, kas ko līdzīgu ir piedzīvojuši. Kaut arī mēs zinām, cik šajās nometnēs bija grūti, vienaldzīgu neatstās nevienu Leo iekšējo sajūtu apraksts par to, kā bada eņģelis skatās pār plecu un izsalkums ir tas, kas nosaka viņa rīcību attiecīgā situācijā, kā da...more
The Hunger Angel was my introduction to the work of Herta Müller. First published in 2009, the same year that she received the Nobel Prize, it is (like much of her work) deeply political. Romania was occupied by the Soviet Union from 1944 to 1958. Müller’s novel deals with the time immediately following WWII when, as she explains in the book’s afterward: “In January 1945 the Soviet General Vinogradov presented a demand in Stalin’s name that all Germans living in Romania be mobilized for “rebuild...more
I have read many good reviews of Herta Muller's writing but until I received this book had not read her. The character Leo is an indentured servant to the Soviets. He physically survives but his psyche is forever changed. I saw him as a sort of anti-hero, very unlike the American tale of the "fighter" who works against the system and escapes from his lot. Leo just learns to survive. He is the every man placed in a horrible situation and is propelled to survival by his hunger angel. In my everyda...more
This one is hard to describe. Leo, a seventeen-year old boy, is sent to a Russian forced labour camp as WWII draws to a close, and the book zeroes in on his and his fellow prisoners' deprivation in the brutal new economy in which they live (and sometimes die). Sounds depressing, and it's certainly dark, but the book's real genius is to be at once a chronicle of the soul's torment and an exhilarating affirmation of its existence, an existence that in itself critiques the oppressive political syst...more
There are so many ways to interpret this book. It is finely written with mind blowing passages that will send tingles down your spine as you connect with the core of Muller's writing. At times the narrative is seamless in the bleak Russian Labor camp and young Leo's perseverance and willingness to survive the horrid wretched days of lice, disease and starvation. In other parts you are witness to his all consumed stoic grief, as if you want to cry out for him, to help him see his own devastating...more
La deportazione della minoranza rumeno-tedesca nei campi di lavoro forzato in Ucraina, da parte dei sovietici, è una delle tante brutte pagine di storia che si sono consumate a guerra quasi finita (gennaio 1945). Scaturisce da questo fatto il libro in cui la fame e il freddo vengono eletti protagonisti principali e assoluti, rispetto cui tutto passa in secondo piano. Il valore di questo testo, a mio avviso, sta proprio nella testimonianza: certe cose e certe esperienze devono essere conosciute d...more
I have never read any Primo Levi, nor Jerzy Kosinski, nor any previous work by Herta Müller, but I found this particular meditation on imprisonment and exile - and the effects of those deprivations - extremely moving and poetic. I mention the first two authors because of their own writings about young people surviving in the horrible cauldron of WWII. In this book, Ms. Müller focuses on Leo Auberg, a young man at odds with the universe for being both ethnically German in Romania and gay. Foregoi...more
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Herta Müller was born in Niţchidorf, Timiş County, Romania, the daughter of Swabian farmers. Her family was part of Romania's German minority and her mother was deported to a labour camp in the Soviet Union after World War II.
She read German studies and Romanian literature at Timişoara University. In 1976, Müller began working as a translator for an engineering company, but in 1979 was dismissed...more
More about Herta Müller...
She read German studies and Romanian literature at Timişoara University. In 1976, Müller began working as a translator for an engineering company, but in 1979 was dismissed...more
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“I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.”
—
25 people liked it
“I'm always telling myself I don't have many feelings. Even when something does affect me I'm only moderately moved. I almost never cry. It's not that I'm stronger than the ones with teary eyes, I'm weaker. They have courage. When all you are is skin and bones, feelings are a brave thing. I'm more of a coward. The difference is minimal though, I just use my strength not to cry. When I do allow myself a feeling, I take the part that hurts and bandage it up with a story that doesn't cry, that doesn't dwell on homesickness.”
—
22 people liked it
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Feb 28, 2013 10:41am