"Herta Müller's prose is as haunting as a cloud that won't go away, brittle like ice that won't ever crack, and sharp like plum brandy you'll never wish to forget. Hers is the voice of a world forever slipping into a vertigo of silent rage while desperately struggling to be human–a world which confuses kindness with cruelty because it has already confused good and evil." –André Aciman, author of Out of Egypt
"A brooding, fog-shrouded allegory of life under the long oppression of the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu." –
The New York Times "The Appointment echoes Kafka's
The Castle and
The Trial in its account of someone summoned repeatedly for ominous interrogations. Müller scatters narrative bombshells across a field of dreams." –
San Francisco Chronicle "A slim, masterfully written tale." –
Newsweek "A taut and brilliant book." –
Chicago Tribune "Powerful. . . Müller achieves something beautiful. She has wrested poetry from one woman's desire to remain human in an inhuman system." –
Newsday "With terse poetry, Müller brings to life a profoundly moving world. . . The lyrical beauty of the prose and its unflinching moral and emotional honesty carry the reader." –
Bookforum