'Already hailed as a Cold War classic.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent Books of the Year
'Utterly absorbing, funny and humane. A romp through a twisted century in the heart of Europe.' Anna Funder, author of Stasiland
International bestseller and Winner of the German Book Prize
A sweeping story of one family over four generations in East Germany: the intertwining of love, life and politics under the GDR regime.
In Times of Fading Light by Eugen Ruge is a sweeping story of one family over fifty years and four generations in East Germany.
Already hailed as a Cold War classic. (Boyd Tonkin, Independent Books of the Year)
An ingenious examination of ordinary life in the GDR. (Sean O'Brien, TLS Books of the Year)
Ruge's award-winning debut novel charts half a century of East German history through the story of appartchik Wilhelm Powileit. This family saga captures in rich detail the realities of daily life in the German Democratic Republic, and evokes a melancholy sense of houses, countries, political systems and people falling apart. (Ángel Gurría-Quintana, Financial Times Books of the Year)
Utterly absorbing, funny and humane. A romp through a twisted century in the heart of Europe. (Anna Funder, author of STASILAND)
Eugen Ruge's wonderful debut novel follows four generations of an East German family from 1952 to 2001 ... From start to finish, Ruge keeps the pages turning. His gift is to mesh the personal with the political, in an epic tale that alternately delights and instructs. It is not often that fiction of this quality comes along. (Ian Thomson, Sunday Telegraph)
'A pulsing, vibrant, thrillingly alive work ... The scene of Alexander Umnitzer's final meeting with his father, Kurt, a once proud and pedantic historian who has lost much of his memory and power of speech, has a brutal honesty and an unsparing humor reminiscent of the best work of Jonathan Franzen ... the lingering sensation on finishing In Times of Fading Light is one not of despair but rather of triumph. You can see that from the ruins of the former Eastern bloc something has emerged with the power to survive and outlast the world from which it came: the art represented by Ruge's book, which has torn down the wall between Russian epic and the Great American Novel.' (New York Times)
Eugen Ruge is to the GDR what Hans Fallada was to the Third Reich. In Times of Fading Light may be a novel as important in the whole literature of the Cold War and its aftermath as anything written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. (Philip Kerr)
In life and in fiction family retains its old tyrannies as Eugen Ruge so brilliantly illustrates in this intelligent, factual and often shockingly funny debut novel ... So good, so funny, so robust, so cruelly realistic, Ruge's politically apolitical, heartbreakingly realistic narrative juxtaposing Thomas Mann with The Simpsons and collective generational gnashing of teeth, is, despite its candour, deceptively subtle; silent weeping undercuts even the loudest laughter: and this is a very funny, serious and exceptional novel. (Eileen Battersby Irish Times)
With a deceptively unfussy narrative style, rich in dialogue and some tremendous set-piece monologues, Ruge's "story of a family" delivers a hugely informative, entertaining and thought-provoking panoramic view of Communism in Germany ... There is much detail to astound in Anthea Bell's impeccable translation, which captures all the charm of the original ... [Ruge] regards three generations' worth of experience with vivacity and humour, and the clarity of one aware of his own ticking clock. (Rebecca K Morrison Independent)
Ruge, the half-German, half-Russian mathematician son of a historian father, has written an intelligent, factual, blunt and at time hilariously shocking memoir-based novel about life in the GDR that is apolitical and full of silent weeping. Balanced somewhere between Thomas Mann and The Simpsons, its triumph rests in Ruge's assured portrayal of his tormented - and tormenting - characters. (Eileen Battersby, Irish Times Books of the Year)
Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 2 x 19.8 cm