Cristina and Her Double

Simon Schama in defence of the essay in the age of Twitter writes: 'The self-propulsion of a ranging intelligence is the dynamo that drives a powerful essay; the headlong gallop of thought to a destination the reader can't predict and which may not have occurred to the writer when he began.' And that power, that propulsion, that surprise is evident in every one of this selection of the very finest of the essays produced over the past 20 years by the Nobel laureate Romanian-German writer Herta Muller. She interrogates Communist society, especially in its bizarre Romanian Ceaucescu variation, and matters of complicity, secrecy, betrayal, guilt, responsibility, resistance and the power of literature in a style that is bewitching, convincing and moving. She is unswerving, unsparing and undeluded. Her reader is grateful. These are among the most powerful demonstrations of the pen's might exceeding the sword's to be produced in the last fifty years in Europe.