Description: Monika Maron, today's great German writer, says a biting farewell to the East Germany of her youth, with humor and honesty. Today when old demons are rising especially in the East, this award-winning novel remains important reading.
Review Quotes:
"Monika Maron herself has chosen, among the painters who influenced her most... a picture by Magritte: two bare feet at the foot of a wall, transformed into a sad pair of worn out boots -- formless, tattered laces, the leather dissolving into carrion. About her work she comments: 'It's exactly like Magritte...the feet remain, just as worn shoes. The body has gone and one stands before an empty wall.' " LE MONDE
"Extraordinary writing." PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY
"Philosophically challenging, ...sometimes disorienting but never boring...admirably translated." WOMEN'S REVIEW OF BOOKS
"Daring and inventive." BELLES LETTRES
"Deeply philosophical and wildly imaginative." FEMINIST BOOK FORTNIGHT
"Much to the discomfort of East German authorities, this outspoken Berlin native -- whose views are as blunt as her shoulder-length hair -- was not content to keep quiet on her side of the Wall. Nor was she content to keep quiet about the Wall." CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
"Maron, with her absurd, compressed reality satisfies the highest demands. Laurence Stern, Poe or Musil would have taken great pleasure in her." DIE WELT
"This Monika Maron is a noteworthy artist of the imaginary, a portrayer not of socialism but rather of life under socialist auspices. And she is an inspired satirist as well...Monika Maron impressively and overwhelmingly mixes the humorous with the frighteningly dramatic element." FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG
"Relentlessly somber, rife with ambiguity, and with the day of the funeral used as a recurring theme, this is a bleak, biting reminder that the old order has fallen but that its long shadow remains." KIRKUS REVIEWS
"A bitter valedictory to the German Democratic Republic, the socialist state that ceased to exist the year before the novel's publication...." NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
"Maron may have, indeed, set out to write a 'finger-pointing' novel. Instead she has crafted one with a particularly universal voice: In a world that has become increasingly institutionalized, the artist, as well as the creative thinker, faces enormous obstacles erected by an often philistine establishment." ST PETERSBURG TIMES