A brooding, fog-shrouded allegory of life under the long oppression of the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu.
New York Times
Nobody since Arthur Koestler in the 1940s has written more intelligently or with such subtle precision about life under totalitarianism ... Müller has an exceptionally rare talent - to turn the terrifying, the distorted and the hideously ugly into something uplifting and beautiful
Prospect
Herta Muller is a passionate artist of protest.
Eileen Battersby
Irish Times
A strange, lyrical and disturbing allegory of life in Ceausescu's Romania.
Hari Kunzru
Observer Books of the Year
A tour de force in storytelling, which manages to turn the barest of prose into poetry ... Expertly translated by Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm, it is a chilling story, exquisitely told
Independent
The Appointment is both a pleasure to read and horrifying. Written with painful clarity, it is seductively conversational, yet every sentence demands attention ... The control of ideas and pace in a novel that still allows rolling emotion behind every line is remarkable.
Herald
A slim, masterfully written tale.
Newsweek
Müller achieves something beautiful. She has wrested poetry from one woman's desire to remain human in an inhuman system.
Newsday
A taut and brilliant book.
Chicago Tribune
Müller scatters narrative bombshells across a field of dreams.
San Francisco Chronicle