The appointment
Subtitle: a novel
By: Herta Müller; translated by Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm
Contributors: Hulse, Michael, 1955-; Boehm, Philip
Edition: 1st Picador USA ed.
Publisher: Picador USA
Published: 2002
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Translated from: ger
Translation of: Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet
Number of pages: 214
ISBN-13: 9780312420543
Work titles: Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet
Description: "I've been summoned. Thursday, ten sharp." Thus begins one day in the life of a young clothing-factory worker during Ceaucescu's totalitarian regime. She has been questioned before; this time, she believes, will be worse. Her crime? Sewing notes into the linings of men's suits bound for Italy. "Marry me," the notes say, with her name and address. Anything to get out of the country. As she rides the tram to her interrogation, her thoughts stray to her friend Lilli, shot trying to flee to Hungary, to her grandparents, deported after her first husband informed on them, to Major Albu, her interrogator, who begins each session with a wet kiss on her fingers, and to Paul, her lover, her one source of trust, despite his constant drunkenness. In her distraction, she misses her stop to find herself on an unfamiliar street. And what she discovers there makes her fear of the appointment pale by comparison.