words for the displacement of the soul among victims of totalitarianism. When the words cannot be found, she invents them. And when words do not suffice, she alloys the text with silence, creating striking prose of great tensile strength.
Translating this prose requires unpacking it in one language and repacking it in another. New coinages such as Nichtrührer or Atemschaukel defy literal rendering: “non-stirrer” and “breath-swing” fail to convey the layers of meaning lurking in these compound words that echo the wordplay in Oskar Pastior’s poetry. Even uninvented words strain against a single definition: Geschirr may be a bowl or a dish or a tin plate or a mess kit or simply a vessel waiting to be filled with something that will determine its meaning, like words themselves, especially in Leo Auberg’s world, where innocent expressions are frequently filled with lethal content. Words, too, can be displaced. My task was to preserve this fundamental displacement without adding undue dislocation.
In matters of style and punctuation I have kept close to the original, where the abandonment of question marks and semicolons reflects the unpunctuated thoughts of the narrator, the simultaneity of insight and experience, the blurring of past and present. Similarly, I have followed the author’s use of small capitals to mark certain words of iconic significance to the narrator.
All of these matters require careful consideration. Fortunately I have not been working alone, and I’m thankful to my family and friends for their kind assistance. Thanks to Herta Müller for indulging my many queries and to the staff at Metropolitan Books for their ongoing support. I am indebted to Ed Cohen for his usual creative scrutiny of the text and to Joana Ocros-Ritter for her invaluable ear in various languages. Finally, I am deeply grateful to Sara Bershtel for her consistently remarkable insights and generous engagement.
—Philip Boehm
ALSO BY HERTA MÜLLER
The Passport
Traveling on One Leg
Nadirs
The Land of Green Plums
The Appointment
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in Romania in 1953, HERTA MÜLLER immigrated to Berlin in 1987 after suffering repeated threats for refusing to cooperate with Ceauşescu’s secret police. The author of The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment, among other novels, she has received numerous honors, including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Hunger Angel has been translated into forty-seven languages.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
PHILIP BOEHM has won numerous awards for his translations from German and Polish, including works by Franz Kafka, Christoph Hein, Gregor von Rezzori, and Stefan Chwin. He also works as a theater director and playwright: produced plays include Mixtitlan, The Death of Atahualpa, and Return of the Bedbug. He lives in St. Louis, where he is the artistic director of Upstream Theater.
Metropolitan Books
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Publishers since 1866
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New York, New York 10010
Metropolitan Books and are registered trademarks of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright © 2009 by Carl Hanser Verlag
Translation copyright © 2012 by Philip Boehm
All rights reserved.
Originally published in Germany in 2009 under the title Atemschaukel by Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Müller, Herta.
[Atemschaukel. English]
The hunger angel : a novel / Herta Müller ; translated by Philip Boehm.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
“Metropolitan Books.”
“Originally published in Germany in 2009 under the title Atemschaukel by Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich.”
ISBN 978-0-8050-9301-8
I. Boehm, Philip. II. Title.
PT2673.U29234A9213 2012
833'914—dc23 2011050952
First U.S. Edition 2012
eISBN 978-0-8050-9546-3
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Table of Contents
Title Page
On packing suitcases
Orach
Cement
The lime women
A motley crew
Wood and cotton wool
Exciting times
On the road
On strict people
Onedroptoomuchhappiness for Irma Pfeifer
Black poplars
Handkerchief and mice
On the heart-shovel
On the hunger angel
Coal alcohol
The zeppelin
On the phantom pain of the cuckoo clock
Kati Sentry
The case of the stolen bread
Crescent Moon Madonna
On the bread trap
On coal
How the seconds drag
On yellow sand
The Russians have their ways, too
Fir trees
10 rubles
On the hunger angel
Latin secrets
Cinder blocks
The gullible bottle and the skeptical one
On daylight poisoning
Every shift is a work of art
When a swan sings
On slag
The burgundy silk scarf
On chemical substances
Who switched my country
Potato man
Sky below earth above
On boredom
The ersatz-brother
The white space below the line
Minkowski’s wire
Black dogs
A spoon here, a spoon there
Once my hunger angel was a lawyer
I have a plan
The tin kiss
The way of the world
White hare
Homesickness. That’s the last thing I need
A bright moment
Carelessness spread like hay
On camp happiness
We’re alive. We only live once
Someday I’ll stroll down elegant lanes
Fundamental, like the silence
The disabler
Do you have a child in Vienna
The cane
Lined notebooks
I’m still the piano
On treasures
Afterword
Translator’s Note
Also by Herta Müller
About the Author
Copyright
Table of Contents
Title Page
On packing suitcases
Orach
Cement
The lime women
A motley crew
Wood and cotton wool
Exciting times
On the road
On strict people
Onedroptoomuchhappiness for Irma Pfeifer
Black poplars
Handkerchief and mice
On the heart-shovel
On the hunger angel
Coal alcohol
The zeppelin
On the phantom pain of the cuckoo clock
Kati Sentry
The case of the stolen bread
Crescent Moon Madonna
On the bread trap
On coal
How the seconds drag
On yellow sand
The Russians have their ways, too
Fir trees
10 rubles
On the hunger angel
Latin secrets
Cinder blocks
The gullible bottle and the skeptical one
On daylight poisoning
Every shift is a work of art
When a swan sings
On slag
The burgundy silk scarf
On chemical substances
Who switched my country
Potato man
Sky below earth above
On boredom
The ersatz-brother
The white space below the line
Minkowski’s wire
Black dogs
A spoon here, a spoon there
Once my hunger angel was a lawyer
I have a plan
The tin kiss
The way of the world
White hare
Homesickness. That’s the last thing I need
A bright moment
Carelessness spread like hay
On camp happiness
We’re alive. We only live once
Someday I’ll stroll down elegant lanes
Fundamental, like the silence
The disabler
Do you have a child in Vienna
The cane
Lined notebooks
I’m still the piano
On treasures
Afterword
Translator’s Note
Also by Herta Müller
About the Author
Copyright