A blogger who goes by Biblibio (and only just posted her real name this last week) created an event called Women in Translation Month, to increase awareness of books in translation written by female authors, and to highlight the fact that there are far more books by men translated into English than books by women. You can read more about it on the Biblibio blog.
I’ve been following her posts all month and wanting to join in, if only in a small way, and finally have a small window of time to get this review up. Back in the spring of 2012, I won a copy of the novel The Hunger Angel by Nobel Prize-winning German author Herta Müller through LibraryThing‘s Early Reviewers program. (It wasn’t an ARC, but an actual hardcover book — very rare in LTER giveaways! Many thanks to Henry Holt and Company, and of course to LibraryThing, for the opportunity to read and review the book.) I posted my review on LT in August 2012, but it appears that I never posted a review here on the blog. So, I decided to copy it here from LT, in recognition of #WITMonth. I’m thrilled that Biblibio decided to create this event, and I hope it has brought some much-needed attention to women writers in translation, and the fact that we need more of them!
The Hunger Angel tells the story of 17-year-old Leo Auberg’s deportation to a Soviet labor camp, and the five years he spent there. If you read novels mainly for plot or character development, this one might not be for you. It helps to know BEFORE you try to read it that the story isn’t really linear, but could instead be called episodic. The chapters are very short, and some of them describe actions and events that occur during Leo’s time in the labor camp. However, some of them are primarily descriptive; their purpose is not to move the story forward, but to add another layer to our understanding of Leo’s experiences in the camp.
Because the chapters are short and serve these two different purposes, I found some to be more interesting than others. It also made for a slightly disorienting reading experience. But the book is well worth reading — for the power of the writing and language, and the light it shines on a dark period in history. Müller places Leo’s focus on physical experiences and specific objects, and this stylistic decision draws the reader into the labor camp. I believe that reading this novel is MEANT to be disorienting, that the reader SHOULD feel a sense of unreality and nightmare, in between moments of hypnotic focus on physical objects.
Müller made the not-uncommon decision to omit quotation marks from the novel. At some point while I read, I realized that it also contains no question marks. In the translator’s note at the end of the book, Philip Boehm confirms that he followed this stylistic choice from the German original — and that’s where I learned there are also no semi-colons in the book. The limited punctuation adds to the reader’s confusion and disorientation, particularly when reading a sentence that is obviously a question. The last sentence in the chapter called “Cement” is, “So why can’t I disappear” (p. 33). This happens again and again, increasing the sense of confusion and dislocation.
Don’t read The Hunger Angel looking for plot, and don’t try too hard to keep track of all the characters mentioned — many of them are not clearly defined, and not too important in themselves. Read it to admire the way Müller uses language to bring this dark history to life, and to pull you into Leo’s world.
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