The Valley of Unknowing - Hardcover

Sington, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393239330 ISBN 13: 9780393239331

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2013

Synopsis

In the twilight years of Communist East Germany, Bruno Krug, author of a single world-famous novel written twenty years earlier, falls for Theresa Aden, a music student from the West. But Theresa has also caught the eye of a cocky young scriptwriter who delights in satirizing Krug s work. Asked to appraise a mysterious manuscript, Bruno is disturbed to find that the author is none other than his rival. Disconcertingly, the book is good very good. But there is hope for the older man: the unwelcome masterpiece is dangerously political. Krug decides that if his affair with Theresa is to prove more than a fling, he must employ a small deception. But in the Workers and Peasants State, knowing the deceiver from the deceived, the betrayer from the betrayed, isn t just difficult: it is a matter of life and death. Now the celebrated author and secret Stasi informer is ready to confess The Valley of Unknowing is both a moving and entertaining love story and a seductive thriller, one that pits the past against the future, commerce against creativity, and art against life."

About this title

Review:

A remarkable novel, the first in English to give us a nuanced portrait of life in Communist East Germany, its absurdity, its menace, and its pervasive sense of betrayal.--Joseph Kanon, author of The Good German

Philip Sington has managed something quite remarkable...a flawless, gripping and penetrating depiction of life in the former East Germany, wrapped up as a literary thriller...His feeling for not just time and place, but atmosphere and way of life is perfect in a way that no other Western writer, not even John le Carré, has achieved.--Peter Millar

The Valley of Unknowing is simply superb: affecting but never melodramatic, literary but never less than thrilling. Though Krug is self-pitying, he wins our sympathy...His story, like the manuscript he grudgingly admire, is 'truthfully, tenderly drawn.'--David Evans

Book Description:

'Amadeus meets The Lives of Others' (Kirkus) in a compelling story of love and rivalry set in the dying days of Communist East Germany.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0393239330
• ISBN 13: 9780393239331
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304