''Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger'' ("The Fox Was Ever the Hunter") is a book by

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...

-winning author

Herta Müller Herta Müller (; born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born in Nițchidorf (; ), Timiș County in Romania; her native languages are German and Romanian. Si ...

. ''Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger'' is a

novelization A novelization (or novelisation) is a derivative novel that adapts the story of a work created for another medium, such as a film, TV series, stage play, comic book, or video game. Film novelizations were particularly popular before the advent ...

of the script for the film ''Der Fuchs der Jäger'', which was produced alongside of Harry Merkel. ''Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger'' was first published in 1992 and is read as if it were a film, because

wholly retains its cinematic character in the piece. Happel called the book "emotionless" and "objective". On the publication by Portobello of an English translation by Philip Boem in 2016, the book was reviewed by Charlotte Ryland in the ''Times Literary Supplement''. She judged "The force of the author's language and the skill of her translator ensure that the text remains as potent as ever...The result is a powerfully unsettling novel, which renders palpable the cruelty of life under the eauşescurégime, as well as the brittle exhilarations of its overthrow".Charlotte Ryland, "Against dictation", ''Times Literary Supplement'', 10 June 2016, page 24

References

1992 German novels Works by Herta Müller German-language novels {{1990s-novel-stub Zimmermann U. Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jager. World Literature Today. 1993;(3):601. Available from: Academic OneFile, Ipswich, MA. Accessed February 25, 2014.