In Zeiten des abnehmenden Lichts

Eugen Ruge’s novel, which has an autobiographical background, reflects the history of East Germany in the fate of one family across four generations. The grandparents are convinced communists who return from exile in Mexico in 1952. The father, sobered by years in Soviet labour camps, still believes a democratic socialism is possible.

His son, Alexander, flees to the West shortly before the Wall falls, and the great-grandson will remember the GDR only as a strange part of childhood. The story is told out of chronological order, beginning and ending in 2001. The title refers literally to early autumn in the Urals and symbolically to the fading appeal of communism.