NO number of re-readings will lessen the impact of Muller's strangely deadpan and surrealistic narrative based on the horrors of Ceausescu's Romania. First published in German in 1993, poet Michael Hoffman's English translation appeared in the US three years later and the novel went on to deservedly win last year's International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Nothing prepares a reader for the experience of entering this chillingly vivid narrative in which a female narrator leads us through her world of sharply fragmented observation. Early on she describes a society in which fear is replaced by insanity. Her dilemma remains clear: "The only thing I couldn't do was go insane. I was still in my right mind". Although the narrator tells her story and that of her doomed friends the novel succeeds through its bizarre, nightmarish atmosphere of helplessness. Muller's images are offbeat and unforgettable, catching the reader by the throat, as do the pen portraits of displaced characters caught like so many rats in a cage. Hoffman's magnificent translation sustains both the random life-indeath quality and the raw, angry irony of this terrifying masterpiece.
