Quotes from book
The Appointment

The Appointment

The Appointment is a novel by German author Herta Müller. The novel was originally published in German in 1997 and later in English by Metropolitan Books and Picador, a Macmillan imprint, in 2001. The novel was one of several for which Müller was known when she received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009. The Appointment portrays the humiliations of Communist Romania, told from the perspective of a young woman working as a clothing-factory worker who has been summoned by the secret police. She is accused of sewing notes into the linings of men's suits bound for Italy asking that the recipient marry her to help her get out of the country.


Herta Müller photo

“The real secret is why love starts out with claws like a cat and then fades with time like a half-eaten mouse.”

Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm translation, Picador 2002, p. 81
The Appointment (1997)

Herta Müller photo
Herta Müller photo

Similar authors

Herta Müller photo
Herta Müller 28
German-Romanian novelist, poet and essayist 1953
Emil M. Cioran photo
Emil M. Cioran 531
Romanian philosopher and essayist
Christopher Morley photo
Christopher Morley 30
American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet
Erich Maria Remarque photo
Erich Maria Remarque 63
German novelist
Marcel Proust photo
Marcel Proust 41
French novelist, critic, and essayist
Thomas Mann photo
Thomas Mann 159
German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
Paul Valéry photo
Paul Valéry 89
French poet, essayist, and philosopher
Hermann Hesse photo
Hermann Hesse 168
German writer
Maurice Maeterlinck photo
Maurice Maeterlinck 21
Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist
Cesare Pavese photo
Cesare Pavese 137
Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator