ALSO BY HERTA MÜLLER
The Passport
Traveling on One Leg
Nadirs
The Land of Green Plums
The Appointment
The Hunger Angel
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HERTA MÜLLER is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the European Literature Prize. She is the author of The Hunger Angel, The Appointment, and The Land of Green Plums, among other books. Born in Romania in 1953, Müller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceauşescu’s secret police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin. You can sign up for email updates here.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Philip Boehm has won numerous awards for his translations from German and Polish, including works by Franz Kafka, Christoph Hein, Hanna Krall, 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.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Epigraph
The way of the apple worm
The man inside his own hand
The forelock
As good as a piece of bread
A necktie
Summer entrails
Days of melons, days of pumpkins
The cat and the dwarf
Nuts
A different silence
Eardrum infection
The smallest man carries the biggest cane
The grass straw in the mouth
Face without face
The razor blade
A fox will step into a trap
You’re not saying anything
My head is dark
The fox on the table
The lost shovel
I can’t stand looking at the water when it’s so cold out
There was a time and is no more
The birthmark
The wasp game
The spreading city
The chamber pot
The fingernails grow
Transparent sleep
A black and white sky
Frozen raspberries
I don’t know you
That doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter at all
Also by Herta Müller
About the Author
About the Translator
Copyright
THE FOX WAS EVER THE HUNTER. Copyright © 2009 by Carl Hanser Verlag
Translation copyright © 2016 by Philip Boehm. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Originally published in Germany in 1992 under the title Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger by Rowohlt Verlag.
Cover photograph © Andrej Pandele/EST & OST Photography
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Müller, Herta, 1953– author.
[Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger. English]
The fox was ever the hunter: a novel / Herta Müller; translated by Philip Boehm.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-8050-9302-5 (hardback)—ISBN 978-0-8050-9602-6 (electronic book)
1. Romania—History—1944–1989—Fiction. 2. Political fiction. I. Boehm, Philip, translator. II. Title.
PT2673.U29234F8313 2016
833’.914—dc23
2015032783
The translator would like to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center for their generous support in making this book available in English.
First U.S. Edition: May 2016
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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.