The Valley of Unknowing

by Philip Sington

Overview

“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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393239331
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/03/2012
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Philip Sington worked as a business journalist and magazine editor for nine years. His novels include Zoia’s Gold and The Einstein Girl. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

"The Valley of Unknowing is simply superb: affecting but never melodramatic, literary but never less than thrilling. Though Krug is self-pitying, he wins our sympathy…His story, like the manuscript he grudgingly admire, is 'truthfully, tenderly drawn.'"

Financial Times - David Evans

"The Valley of Unknowing is simply superb: affecting but never melodramatic, literary but never less than thrilling. Though Krug is self-pitying, he wins our sympathy…His story, like the manuscript he grudgingly admire, is 'truthfully, tenderly drawn.'"— David Evans Financial Times

"Philip Sington has managed something quite remarkable…a flawless, gripping and penetrating depiction of life in the former East Germany, wrapped up as a literary thriller…His feeling for not just time and place, but atmosphere and way of life is perfect in a way that no other Western writer, not even John le Carré, has achieved."— Peter Millar The Oldie

"A remarkable novel, the first in English to give us a nuanced portrait of life in Communist East Germany, its absurdity, its menace, and its pervasive sense of betrayal."— Joseph Kanon, author of The Good German

From the Publisher