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In Times of Fading Light begins in September 2001 as Alexander Umnitzer, who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, leaves behind his ailing father to fly to Mexico, where his grandparents lived as exiles in the 1940s.
The novel then takes us both forward and back in time, creating a panoramic view of the family's history: from Alexander's grandparents' return to the GDR to build the socialist state, to his father's decade spent in a gulag for criticizing the Soviet regime, to his son's desire to leave the political struggles of the twentieth century in the past.
With wisdom, humor, and great empathy, Eugen Ruge draws on his own family history as he masterfully brings to life the tragic intertwining of politics, love, and family under the East German regime.
"[An] evocative family chronicle ... full-bodied storytelling with an enlightening sense of modern history." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Though Ruge portrays all of his characters - from senile party stalwart Wilhelm to Russian transplant Irina to straying professor Kurt - with great tenderness, his story is at its core a depiction of a family's dissolution, the consequence of inter-generational conflict and bleak historical circumstances. There isn't any nostalgia here, just a deeply plaintive examination of personal and political tragedy." - Booklist
"Ruge takes full advantage of the varying viewpoints to display, impressively, the density of family life." - Kirkus
"A novel full of the wisdom of experience." - Die Zeit (Germany)
"Ruge's characters have a fully rounded existence beyond their own period. Perhaps for that very reason, he tells us more about the GDR and the difficulties of life there than all the books analyzing its ideologies and the harsh reality. The time is ripe for this clear, humorous, and understanding look at the subject." - Die Tageszeitung (Germany)
"Outstanding ... A fascinating inside view of the GDR." - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany)
"The real miracle of this novel ... lies in how he does each of his characters justice, in precise, unpretentious language, based entirely on observations and the importance of things, smells, [and] gestures. There is no reason to mourn the GDR as a state, but there are a lot of reasons to tell the story of successful or wasted lives with fine black humor." - Die Welt (Germany)
"In Times of Fading Light is a generational saga like no other - an East German perspective on half a century of history. As the dreamlike details of each interior life unfold, we become intimate with characters who are scarcely intimate with themselves. We get to see their scorns, hopes, and habits of denial, as the ground beneath them shifts. A haunting and eye-opening book." - Joan Silber, author of Ideas of Heaven and Fools
This information about In Times of Fading Light was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eugen Ruge won the 2011 German Book Prize for In Times of Fading Light, his debut novel, which became a bestseller in Germany and has been translated into twenty languages. Anthea Bell is a prizewinning translator.
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