Herta Müller: The Hunger Angel

The Passport

Traveling on One Leg

Nadirs

The Land of Green Plums

The Appointment

Born in Romania in 1953, HERTA MÜLLER immigrated to Berlin in 1987 after suffering repeated threats for refusing to cooperate with Ceauşescu’s secret police. The author of The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment , among other novels, she has received numerous honors, including the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Hunger Angel has been translated into forty-seven languages.

PHILIP BOEHM has won numerous awards for his translations from German and Polish, including works by Franz Kafka, Christoph Hein, Gregor von Rezzori, 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.

Metropolitan Books

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Copyright © 2009 by Carl Hanser Verlag

Translation copyright © 2012 by Philip Boehm

All rights reserved.

Originally published in Germany in 2009 under the title Atemschaukel by Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Müller, Herta.

[Atemschaukel. English]

The hunger angel : a novel / Herta Müller ; translated by Philip Boehm.—1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

“Metropolitan Books.”

“Originally published in Germany in 2009 under the title Atemschaukel by Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich.”

ISBN 978-0-8050-9301-8

I. Boehm, Philip. II. Title.

PT2673.U29234A9213 2012

833’914—dc23 2011050952

First U.S. Edition 2012

eISBN 978-0-8050-9546-3

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.