Eugen Ruge

Descriptions of normal life with its normal entertainment are the strength of this 57–year–old narrator. Emotional cruelty, comic complications, excessive embarrassment, lies and minutes of silence are part of this normality. Eugen Ruge is not a writer who mimics the reborn Thomas Mann, or a writer who aims for literary polish, but one who gets as close as possible to life as it was. Everyday life in East Germany from 1952 to 2001 thus has a powerful new – and burlesque – voice. In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts is a novel about a model family which was part of the system and thus also a small part of world politics. (…) Eugen Ruge is the son of Wolfgang Ruge, who was a very famous historian in the German Democratic Republic. Eugen felt almost a compulsion to write a “private” book to follow his father’s works, which conformed to the system. This is a family story containing as much saga as historical truth.

Verena Auffermann: „Krach, Kloß und Kommunismus“
© Literaturen October/November 2011