by Herta Müller
First published 2010
A narrator and her friends abandon Romania's poor provinces for city life, hoping to escape hardship and find friendship. They discover the urban landscape carries the same brutal marks of Ceausescu's totalitarian rule. The city offers no refuge from the dictatorship's reach. One by one, the friends turn against each other and compromise their own values. The narrator watches as the oppressive system forces everyone to choose between submission to the regime or resistance that leads to destruction. Even the most resilient people cannot escape this impossible choice. The state has invaded every corner of human existence. Men stuff their mouths with sour plums. Women sleep with slaughterhouse workers to obtain scraps of meat. Workers manufacture useless objects like tin sheep and wooden watermelons. Through these stark images, the story reveals how tyranny corrupts both a nation and its people from within.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: corruption, resistance, submission
Setting: Romania
Period: 20th-century
258 pages · Paperback · Picador
Content warnings: abuse