Hunger is an Object: The Hunger Angel by Herta Muller (EN)



A review in English


A novel written based on a true story of Oskar Pastior, a poet who lived just long enough to give Herta Muller the background of the novel. This novel is consisted of 64 chapters which tells a story of a German who was deported to a concentration camp in Soviet Union (now Russia). As one of the novels which takes place in the middle of German-Soviet War, the Hunger Angel is documenting the inhumanity in exploiting the Germans in a forced-labor as the payback for damages caused by the war. There are a bunch of novels with similar background such as Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz, Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn and Night by Wiesel, but the way Herta Muller carries on the story in The Hunger Angel and plays with readers’ emotion is one of a kind.

Leo Auberg, an ethnic German living in Romania, was picked up by the patrols from his home to be transported to the concentration camp located in Russia. Leo was deported in winter 1945, just after the war had ended. Prior to the deportation of Germans living in Europe to the concentration camps scattered all over Russia, in 1944 Red Army had advanced deep inside Romania; the Fascist dictatorship was overthrown and its leader, Ion Antonescu, was arrested and later executed. In September 1944, Romania signed an armistice, surrendered to Russia and out of the blue declared war to its former ally, Nazi Germany. However, while the war ended with German was on defeat, Stalin ordered the Red Army to deport the Germans at the ages of 17 – 45, both the men and the women, to the concentration camps in Russia as the force-laborer. When he was climbed the truck in front of his home, Leo Auberg only carried a suitcase made from a gramophone box containing a couple of coats, pants, gaiters, gloves, a silk scarf and toilet kit.

“All that I have I carry on me. Or: All that is mine I carry with me. I carried all I had, but it wasn’t mine. Everything either came from someone else or wasn’t what it was supposed to be” On Packing Suitcases, pg. 1

These handful of things that he carried to the camp were so precious for him; these things would determine his survival in the years ahead. All the things he carried represented the memories from his previous life before being deported and were the hope that he kept clinging to. Leo was picked up at his home by the patrols in the dusk and all he heard was the sentence from his grandmother who was standing in front of the door,

“I know you’ll come back

Leo met the other Germans who came from different regions across the Europe on a train from Romania to Russia. Being called as A Motley Crew, they came from different places to be gathered in a concentration camp, some of the character are Trudi Pelikan, Artur Prikulitsch and Beatrice Zakel who had known each other since they were children, Oswald Enyeter, Konrad Fonn, Karli Halmen, Albert Gion and many others. None of them had ever been in a war, had ever known the feeling of being on the front line and had ever understood anything that happened during war (the diplomacy, the accords, etc), but they were there, cramped in the barracks, just because they were Germans. And that the Germans were guilty of the destruction and the damages in Russia during the war. And they were there as forced-laborer, paying back what German had done in Russia.

None of us were part of any war, but because we were Germans, the Russians considered us guilty of Hitler’s crimes” A Mortley Crew, pg. 36.

In the concentration camp, Leo worked for a piece of bread and a pinch of salt; he shoveled sand and cement, transported the materials from the camp to other places, and worked on slag cellar. Leo and the others dealt with diseases and violent winters. And for 5 years, he counted the days and the seasons he’d be out from the camp and on his way home, the place where he could have his tummy full again. There were friends who came and gone during his stay in the camp, either they were just dead or missing during their duty. Or there were times where he laid back with his tummy empty, imagining his life to be the normal one; with enough food, with family and a spouse (probably). All the chapters are composed by brilliant poetic ruminations and transformations of this young man as he deals with the slag and coal he digs and heaves from dawn to dusk every day.

As for hunger angels, the novel describes the being as a contrived and somewhat overindulged spirit that broods over Leo’s life, interrupts its few pleasures and remains to damn him. However at the same time, the spirit is the driven-factor for Leo to keep his life going in the camp. The end of the story is relieving and frustrating at the same time. Living as a forced-laborer is a taboo that couldn’t be spoken of at that time.

The grim and poetic description of Leo’s life that stretch along the novel and Leo’s imagination of coming home are the interesting parts of the story. Herta Muller is succeed in bringing the experiences in the concentration camp through Leo’s feeling and eyes to the readers. I’d like to recommend this book for readers who love classic, historical and documentary books.

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