Fiction Book Reviews

Book Review: The Passport

By Sandy Amazeen Nov 23, 2009, 2:07 GMT

From the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature! "A swift, stinging narrative, fable-like in its stoic concision and painterly detail."-The Philadelphia Inquirer The Passport is a beautiful, haunting novel whose subject is a German village in Romania caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu\'s dictatorship and the glittering temptations of the West. Stories from the past are woven together with the problems Windisch, ...more

Romanian author and winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature, Muller makes her English language debut with a simply drawn, deeply felt story of Windisch a miller who is seeking to emigrate from the tiny village. Such a move requires government documents yet no matter how many bags of flour he leaves with the appropriate official, no passport is forthcoming. In desperation, Windisch finally sends his daughter to “visit” those in power, a move that parallels the actions of his wife who did whatever it took to survive the ravages of a war torn country.

Muller’s spare writing style has a haunting, almost lyrical quality as she draws a window to the local superstitions, customs and power structure of a tiny village suffering under the heel of Ceausescu’s dictatorship.