Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
The Fox Was Ever the Hunter  By  cover art

The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

By: Herta Müller, Philip Boehm - translator
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.56

Buy for $15.56

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

An early masterpiece from the winner of the Nobel Prize, hailed as the laureate of life under totalitarianism.

Romania, the last months of the Ceaușescu regime. Adina is a young schoolteacher, Paul is a musician, and Clara works in a wire factory. Pavel is Clara's lover, but one of them works for the secret police and is reporting on the whole group.

One day Adina returns home to discover that her fox fur rug has had its tail cut off. On another occasion it's the hind leg. Then it's a foreleg. The mutilated fur is a sign that she is being tracked by the secret police - the fox was ever the hunter.

Images of photographic precision combine into a kaleidoscope of terror as Adina and her friends struggle to keep mind and body intact in a world pervaded by complicity and permeated with fear, where it's hard to tell victim from perpetrator. In The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, Herta Müller once again uses language that displays the "concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose" - as the Swedish Academy noted upon awarding her the Nobel Prize - to create a hauntingly cinematic portrayal of the corruption of the soul under totalitarianism.

©2009 Carl Hanser Verlag. Translation © 2016 by Philip Boehm (P)2016 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

What listeners say about The Fox Was Ever the Hunter

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    5
  • 4 Stars
    6
  • 3 Stars
    6
  • 2 Stars
    3
  • 1 Stars
    2
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    10
  • 4 Stars
    5
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    4
  • 4 Stars
    7
  • 3 Stars
    5
  • 2 Stars
    2
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Challenging

I’m new to this author and was drawn to her by her reputation and her life. Her bool was well narrated in that I found the characters’ personalities coming through not just via the text but in the tone of the narrator’s tone and accent. The story is unlike any I’ve read or heard and the terse language emphasized an unfamiliar feeling as well as lent an air of starkness to the lives of the characters.
I may want to re-listen to this book, as the story moved along abruptly, and I felt I was missing meanings and intention at times.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

A good story poorly told.

There is great drama in an interesting historical context happening here. The stort itself suffers due to a beautiful yet contrived style wjich sacrifices clarity for the sake of elegance.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars
  • J
  • 06-27-16

The narration is terrible. There is no real story.

While the prose was lyrical and often profound to the point of nonsensical, it was the narrative that forced me to stop halfway through. Nobel prize?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful