The Valley of Unknowing
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
“Remarkable…Superbly anchored in place and time…[A] brilliant, evocative and accurate novel.”—The Times (London)
In the twilight years of Communist East Germany, Bruno Krug, author of a single world-famous novel written twenty years earlier, falls for Theresa Aden, a music student from the West. But Theresa has also caught the eye of a cocky young scriptwriter who delights in satirizing Krug’s work.
Asked to appraise a mysterious manuscript, Bruno is disturbed to find that the author is none other than his rival. Disconcertingly, the book is good—very good. But there is hope for the older man: the unwelcome masterpiece is dangerously political. Krug decides that if his affair with Theresa is to prove more than a fling, he must employ a small deception. But in the Workers’ and Peasants’ State, knowing the deceiver from the deceived, the betrayer from the betrayed, isn’t just difficult: it is a matter of life and death. Now the celebrated author and secret Stasi informer is ready to confess…
The Valley of Unknowing is both a moving and entertaining love story and a seductive thriller, one that pits the past against the future, commerce against creativity, and art against life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sington's newest (after The Einstein Girl), set in late-1980s East Germany, is a complex tale of artistic aspirations, romantic jealousies, and theft. Bruno Krug, a middle-aged plumber, is also the author of the acclaimed The Orphans of Neustadt, published 20 years earlier. When his editor asks him to review the manuscript of screenwriter Wolfgang Richter's first novel, The Valley of Unknowing, Bruno is astonished to discover that Valley reads like the sequel to Orphans he was never able to write. Meanwhile, Bruno falls in love with Theresa Aden, an Austrian violin player who is also in a relationship with Wolfgang. After the screenwriter dies under suspicious circumstances, Bruno claims full credit for Valley and dupes Theresa into smuggling it out of the country. She pseudonymously publishes it as Survivors, and the book garners international praise. As her star rises in the West, an insecure Bruno attempts to defect to marry her, but his bold literary theft and the vexing complications of the subterfuge prove too heavy a burden. Fans of Philip Kerr will appreciate the historical accuracy and intrigue of this Cold War era literary thriller.
