Book cover of In Times of Fading Light

Book description

'Already hailed as a Cold War classic.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent Books of the Year

'Utterly absorbing, funny and humane. A romp through a twisted century in the heart of Europe.' Anna Funder, author of Stasiland

International bestseller and Winner of the German Book Prize

A sweeping story of one family…

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1 author picked In Times of Fading Light as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

In Times of Fading Light is a masterful five-decade family saga that melds the personal and the political to create a fascinating portrait of East Germany before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Intelligent, fearless, and full of dark humor, it is both an ingeniously structured page-turner, moving back and forward in time, and a literary tour de force. Eugen Ruge was a 35-year-old playwright when the Wall fell, and In Times of Fading Light, published in 2011, was his first novel. It provides a rich understanding of how people lived and loved in East Germany that scotches…

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