Ruge’s evocative family chronicle spans nearly 60 years, moving fluidly from 2001 to 1952, with several stops in between. In the small German town of Neuendorf in 2001, elderly Kurt Umnitzer is paid one last visit, before senility completely overtakes him, by his son Alexander, who himself has recently been diagnosed with cancer. As Alexander sorts through Kurt’s belongings and photographs, he delves into the family’s history. Alexander goes to Mexico to learn more about his father, while the story travels back to the 1950s, which find Alexander’s grandmother Charlotte and her husband, Wilhelm, living as loyal communists in East Berlin, along with Kurt and his wife, Irina. Cuba in the 1960s, Russia in the 1970s, and the fall of the Berlin Wall provide further backdrops and catalysts for the Umnitzer family’s troubled journey through the 20th century. Ruge tends to focus on his scenes, which are heavy on both seemingly insignificant detail (the opening sentence puts Alexander on “a buffalo leather sofa”) and plot, combining dense, full-bodied storytelling with an enlightening sense of modern history. Agent: Carolin Mungard, Rowohlt Verlag. (Jun.)
Mr. Ruge's novel is a pulsing, vibrant, thrillingly alive work, full of formal inventiveness, remarkable empathy and, above all, mordant and insightful wit. . . . You can see that from the ruins of the former Eastern bloc something has emerged with the power to survive and outlast the world from which it came: the art represented by Mr. Ruge's book, which has torn down the wall between Russian epic and the Great American Novel.” —The New York Times
“An important, highly accomplished debut novel. . . . After reading and rereading we realize how carefully Ruge has placed each part of the puzzle; this splendid, beautifully translated novel becomes richer as it acquires a logic of its own. . . . We must be even more grateful for Ruge's vision and talent . . . out of that gloomy bleak place and time, he has given us such a unique and evocative novel.” —The Boston Globe
“Not many writers publish their first novel in their late 50s, and even fewer still publish one as impressive and internationally well received as this one. . . . Powerful . . . Ruge has managed to weave the personal into the political in a book that functions as an ethnography of a lost time as much as it does a novel.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“The strength of this often funny, sometimes moving novel is its unwavering psychological realism. . . . With real skill, Ruge shows us historical change through a variety of viewpoints.” —The Barnes and Noble Review
“Impressive. . . . a shrewd and very knowing novel, slippery with the truth and packed tight with compressed tension, and written by a talented new voice.” —Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
“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 intergenerational conflict and bleak historical circumstances. There isn't any nostalgia here, just a deeply plaintive examination of personal and political tragedy.” —Booklist, starred review
“[An] evocative family chronicle . . . full-bodied storytelling with an enlightening sense of modern history.” —Publishers Weekly
“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
“Ruge takes full advantage of the varying viewpoints to display, impressively, the density of family life.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A novel full of the wisdom of experience.” —Die Zeit
“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
“Outstanding . . . A fascinating inside view of the GDR.” —Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“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
A multifaceted look at four generations of an East German family with roots in the Communist Party; this debut was a commercial and literary success in the German author's homeland. The action moves back and forth over 50 years, beginning in 1952, but the central event, witnessed by six different viewpoint characters, occurs in 1989, shortly before the Berlin Wall comes down. The occasion is the 90th birthday party of Wilhelm, the patriarch, an unrepentant Stalinist and Party bigwig. Family members present include Charlotte, his imperious, mean-spirited wife, and his stepson Kurt, a respected Party historian and timid reformer. Conspicuously absent are Kurt's Russian wife and his rebellious son Alexander, who that day has fled to the West. Though ideology is a crucial element of the novel, first and foremost come the domestic concerns that affect any family. Thus, the climax of Wilhelm's party will not be his receiving one more Party honor, nor the news of Alexander's defection, carefully concealed by Kurt, but the collapse of the old folks' dining table, inexpertly assembled by Wilhelm, whose powers are failing. And it is typical of the oblique narration that you might even miss the act that ends his life that same day. Mysteries abound. We first meet Wilhelm and Charlotte in Mexico, refugees from Nazism, ending their 12-yearslong exile. Has Wilhelm been a secret agent for the Soviets? The possibility dangles. Why is there just one tiny reference to Charlotte's first husband, the father of her sons? Those sons were sent to the gulag after Kurt's veiled criticism of Stalin in a private letter to his brother. Kurt did 10 years; his brother was murdered, circumstances undisclosed. Most important, how did Kurt keep his faith in communism after his ordeal? A case of self-deception? His son Alexander believes "everything is deception." It's a grand theme, but it's left undeveloped. Ruge takes full advantage of the varying viewpoints to display, impressively, the density of family life, but a thematic cohesion is lacking.
