The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

by Herta Muller

Philip Boehm (Translator)

Romania, the last months of the dictator's regime. Adina is a young schoolteacher. Paul is a musician. Clara, Adina's friend, works in a wire factory. Pavel is Clara's lover. But one of them works for the secret police and is reporting on the group.

One day Adina returns home to discover that her fox fur rug has had its tail cut off. On another day, a hindleg. Then a foreleg. The mutilation is a sign that she is being tracked - the fox was ever the hunter.

Images of photographic precision combine to form a kaleidoscope of reflections, deflections and deceit. Adina and her friends struggle to keep living in a world permeated with fear, where even the eyes of a cat seem complicit with the watchful eye of the state, and where it's hard to tell the victim apart from the perpetrator.

• ISBN10: 1846274761
• ISBN13: 9781846274763
• Publish Date: 5 May 2016
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 6 July 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Granta Books
• Imprint: Portobello Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 256
• Language: English

Reviews

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

Interesting story of life during the totalitarian reign of Nicolae Ceaușescu. I enjoyed the insight but found the novel a little descriptive for my liking and the characters a little flat

[Lianne]

I won a complimentary eCopy of this book courtesy of the publishers via a book giveaway. My full review of the novel can be found on my blog, eclectictales.com: http://www.eclectictales.com/blog/2016/11/10/review-the-fox-was-ever-the-hunter/

My feelings are quite mixed about this book. On the one hand it’s beautifully written, that sense of touch and go with the experiences of these characters, what they see, how their everyday lives go, the little things that just add to the overall experience of living under the Ceausescu regime. It’s quite poetic and on that alone, it gives the book an artsy and haunting feel/atmosphere.

Having said that, the book as a whole felt rather disjointed which made for a rather jarring and detached reading experience. The book felt more like a slice-of-life novel moreso than a book driven by plot; even after Adina and her friends find themselves tracked by the secret police, I didn’t quite feel a sense of urgency in the story. Nor did I ever feel really connected to the characters that it was easy to lose attention as I read.

So unfortunately I didn’t quite enjoy The Fox Was Ever the Hunter as much as I would have liked to. It was beautifully written but it didn’t quite engage me as I thought it would have.