Book Presentation
In Times of Fading Light (novel)
Author: Eugen Ruge
A novel with an autobiographical background, reflects the history of the GDR in the story of a family. The author Eugen Ruge and his translator Hoang Dang Lanh present.
The novel reflects the history of the GDR in the life of a family. The narration spans over three generations. The grandparents still burned for communism when they returned from Mexican exile to build a new Germany. The son comes home from the Soviet Union with a Russian wife and despite dire lager experiences, he sticks to his belief in the political idea of socialism. The grandson has grown up in the GDR; he leaves his home country on the day when family, friends and comrades celebrate his grandfather's ninetieth birthday. The title of the book refers to early autumn season, to the memories of the Russian grandmother, but it also metaphorically alludes to the fading radiance of communist utopia, which has lost its credibility due to the failed socialist experiment in the GDR.The novel was awarded the Alfred Döblin Prize in 2009, the Aspekte Literature Prize in 2011 and the German Book Prize in the same year.
Eugen Ruge (*24.06.1954 in Sverdlovsk Oblast, Soviet Union) is the son of the GDR historian Wolfgang Ruge, who had been deported by the Soviet rulers in the Siberian camp 239; his mother is Russian. Eugen Ruge came to East Berlin together with his parents at the age of two. The novel contains biographical features.
After studying mathematics and a successful diploma at the Humboldt University Berlin Eugen Ruge became a research assistant at
the Central Institute for Physics of the Earth of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. In 1986 he began working as a writer, documentary filmmaker and scriptwriter. In 1988 he moved to the Federal Republic of Germany. Since 1989 he works mainly as an author for theater, radio and film. In addition to his translations of several Chekhov plays and authoring for documentary films and plays, he held temporary guest professorship at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 2011 he made his debut as a novelist entitled „In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts”, for which he received the German Book Prize.