The Passport (Masks)
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Review
`She's an excellent author with truly fantastic language' -- Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy
`Müller has an eye for the surreal detail of a police state and has made it into strong, muscular literature' --The Times
`Müller is courageous and has summoned her surrealist imagination to brilliant effect when exposing the horrors of totalitarianism' --Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
`Graphically observed... forces the reader to confront the complex tapestry of Eastern European history in the late 20th Century.' --Razia Iqbal, BBC Arts Correspondent
'Her sensibility is often bleak, but the detail in her fiction can whip it alive' --New York Times
`What heightens this bleak vision is her startling, hallucinatory use of metaphor and surreal imagery' --Jessica Holland, Observer
`At once spare and poetic, this novella-length tale nevertheless attains the epic ponderousness that defines recent Laureates' --Hephzibah Anderson, Daily Mail
`Müller writes with elegant simplicity, in the great tradition of German storytelling' --Kate Saunders, The Times
`A powerful indictment of one of history's lamentable rulers.' --Julian Fleming, Sunday Business Post
`A masterclass in sparse, clear prose... with the occasional touch of dark, bitter magic - fully earning her Nobel Prize.' -- Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday
`Startling and hallucinatory use of metaphor and surreal imagery' --Geoff Bottoms, Morning Star
`This short novel expands in the mind to occupy an emotional space far beyond its short length' --Tadzio Martin Toelb, TLS
`Müller has an eye for the surreal detail of a police state and has made it into strong, muscular literature' --The Times
`Müller is courageous and has summoned her surrealist imagination to brilliant effect when exposing the horrors of totalitarianism' --Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
`Graphically observed... forces the reader to confront the complex tapestry of Eastern European history in the late 20th Century.' --Razia Iqbal, BBC Arts Correspondent
'Her sensibility is often bleak, but the detail in her fiction can whip it alive' --New York Times
`What heightens this bleak vision is her startling, hallucinatory use of metaphor and surreal imagery' --Jessica Holland, Observer
`At once spare and poetic, this novella-length tale nevertheless attains the epic ponderousness that defines recent Laureates' --Hephzibah Anderson, Daily Mail
`Müller writes with elegant simplicity, in the great tradition of German storytelling' --Kate Saunders, The Times
`A powerful indictment of one of history's lamentable rulers.' --Julian Fleming, Sunday Business Post
`A masterclass in sparse, clear prose... with the occasional touch of dark, bitter magic - fully earning her Nobel Prize.' -- Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday
`Startling and hallucinatory use of metaphor and surreal imagery' --Geoff Bottoms, Morning Star
`This short novel expands in the mind to occupy an emotional space far beyond its short length' --Tadzio Martin Toelb, TLS
Book Description
From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2009
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I hadn't heard of The Passport or its author Herta Muller until she won the aforementioned Nobel Prize for Literature last year and so really went into reading this with no preconceptions and maybe this is why in many ways it proved a very interesting and quite different read. The book is set in a German village in the Danube plains of Romania and looks at how the villagers are surviving trapped under the dictatorship of Ceausescu. It's written like a selection of short tales of the villagers lives seen mainly through the eyes of the village miller Windisch as he wanders the town. It's a place where people believe that the apple tree is possessed by the devil and that you must always watch the movements of owls.
It is through a chapter; though they are more snapshots of two pages maximum, called `A Big House' that we learn about the regime the villagers are all under as Windisch's daughter Amalie teaches her class. In fact Amalie ends up playing a very important role in how her family end up getting passports in order to escape this trap they have found themselves living in and in quite a disturbing way. She is also the constant worry of her father as he becomes aware she may be sexually active. Along with all that goes on in his village as well as his daughter and the misery of his marriage, which is a union of loss and consolation rather than love, the tale through Windisch's eyes is quite a bleak and desperate one but I do feel it is definitely one that should be told.
I will admit in parts the book lost me as it's doesn't have a rigid pattern and a paragraph or two might need a re-read in order to make sense, in some ways this was part of the books beauty. The true beauty of the book is Muller's prose which is a delight to read, even if sometimes you might not be quite sure what she is referring to or making a metaphor of. These surreal snapshots with walls that talk and owls that can kill by landing on a roof, that bring to life the village in a way that I haven't read in a book about the war and its after effects. An interesting and intriguing book.
It is through a chapter; though they are more snapshots of two pages maximum, called `A Big House' that we learn about the regime the villagers are all under as Windisch's daughter Amalie teaches her class. In fact Amalie ends up playing a very important role in how her family end up getting passports in order to escape this trap they have found themselves living in and in quite a disturbing way. She is also the constant worry of her father as he becomes aware she may be sexually active. Along with all that goes on in his village as well as his daughter and the misery of his marriage, which is a union of loss and consolation rather than love, the tale through Windisch's eyes is quite a bleak and desperate one but I do feel it is definitely one that should be told.
I will admit in parts the book lost me as it's doesn't have a rigid pattern and a paragraph or two might need a re-read in order to make sense, in some ways this was part of the books beauty. The true beauty of the book is Muller's prose which is a delight to read, even if sometimes you might not be quite sure what she is referring to or making a metaphor of. These surreal snapshots with walls that talk and owls that can kill by landing on a roof, that bring to life the village in a way that I haven't read in a book about the war and its after effects. An interesting and intriguing book.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The grey, oppressive life of a rural village in Romania, populated by the German-speaking minority, during the Ceausescu regime. The protagonist is Windisch, the village miller, a middle aged man who lives with his wife and a teenage daughter, and wants to leave Romania for Germany. In order to do that, he needs a passport, and in order to get one he needs to bribe various officials, including the mayor of the small town. Written in 1986 by last year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, the German-speaking Romanian-born novelist Herta Muller, it is structured in small chapters, in which not very much happens, just the petty jealousies among the various characters (there is not a single person in the book that is really likable). While the prose is not difficult, the oppressiveness, small-mindedness and dullness of the situations requires a patient reader, but it is a rewarding book (and is not very long).
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The Passport conjures up images like dark magic. It is beautifully poetic. It shows rough, crude, harsh reality. It shows dreams and love. It shows what terrible things become normal when survival is at stake, and when there is a possible way out of prison. A must read that I will reread.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
the Passport
This book was chosen by one of the member of my bookclub. We had conflicting view about this book. I enjoyed reading it as I could relate to the the place, having visited Romania. Read more
Published 20 months ago by Alina Listopad
Arduous Poetry
If you like dark, foreboding poetry, you'll like this book; really, it's as simple as that.
Set in Communist Romania, 'The Passport' is a series of vignettes observing... Read more
Set in Communist Romania, 'The Passport' is a series of vignettes observing... Read more
Published 21 months ago by Sofia
One of the dullest books ever printed
The fact that Herta Muller won the Noble Prize for Fiction leads me to question what qualifies this kind of literature for the title??? Read more
Published on 25 May 2010 by C. Sims
Strange little book
The idea that this was a Nobel Literature Prize winning book and that it was about Romania sold me on the idea of purchase. Now, reading it was a struggle. Read more
Published on 12 May 2010 by DuncanBarresiSharon
Mixed Feelings
I previously read The Appointment, which was excellent. While I enjoyed this book, it was not very easy to follow what she was talking about a lot of the time. Read more
Published on 18 April 2010 by Colin Nicholson
The Light, the Land and the Symbolic Paradox
There is a stark simplicity to Mullers prose. When this is used to convey the sultry natural scenes and ignoble baseness of trying to live in Ceausescu's Romania the results are... Read more
Published on 4 Mar 2010 by Paul Valentine
Puzzled
Frankly I find it inexplicable that so many people like this book. I gave up reqading it after four chapters.
Published on 22 Feb 2010 by Nigel Saperia
boring
Look, I am sure that the critics love this but as a reader it is just depressing and worse than that boring. Read more
Published on 23 Jan 2010 by bubble
Quick to read but challenging
I have enjoyed reading this book which was like a dark version of Ben Okri describing a small village, trapped. Read more
Published on 12 Jan 2010 by Mrs J.
Not my Type of books
I am sure this book was well received by critics and the author did get the Noble Prize but I failed to read this book on many attempts. It is just boring to me. Read more
Published on 2 Dec 2009 by Maroun H. Khoury
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