Pretty weak. How did this win any literary prizes is beyond me. Too many characters, too many stereotypes, too many sitcom set-pieces.

a very good book about life in GDR. the german-russian encounters are quite funny. it reflects the atmosphere very well yet it lacks some fundamental insight.

The saga part was missing. (GR Star ratings are a bit different in tone than the rating that I use on my blog).
http://www.burtonbookreview.com/2013/05/in-times-of-fading-light-novel-by-eugen.html

This is a good book. However It is written in a bit of a disjointed fashion, bouncing around from 2001 to 1950 to 1989 etc. I had a bit of trouble putting it all together because of this distracting presentation. But I also read it in bits and snitches and it may be that it is partially my fault that I didn't pull it all together. Probably a 4.0, but my rating is 3.6. I should probably re-read it, but I have to move on to other things.

i think you need to have a basic understanding of germany from the 50s to the present day to understand this book and i don't have that. atm i'm doing an essay about revolutions for uni and 1989 kept appearing and then i picked up this book from where it had been sitting on my bedroom floor since christmas and look! communism! 1989! and yet i still have no idea how to answer my essay question or how to follow this book. that's not to say it wasn't good. it's detailed and kind of rambly and i didn't really have any attachment to the characters but i was mostly interested in what was happening, especially the 2001 sections. the main character is called sasha! okay it's really alexander but his family call him sasha. i never read books with my name in them, even if this is a different spelling from mine, so this was a real thrill.

i had been so interested and excited to read this and it just really fell flat for me. maybe when i research germany, the berlin wall, and its reunification i'll come back and enjoy it a little more.

A sprawling novel that is constructed via a series of loosely connected vignettes seen through different eyes over a period of 50 years.

The book itself charts the rise and fall of East Germany through the story of one family, which captures in rich - albeit fragmented - detail the realities of daily life in the GDR, and arouses an incredibly melancholy sense of the way that dwellings, countries, families, political systems and indeed people themselves falling apart.

I really liked it, but it is rather depressing!

Illuminating, I suppose--I certainly picked up some of the rancid flavor of Communist East Germany. But, glowing New York Times book review notwithstanding, the books is deadly boring. I suppose, given the subject, that could be the point. I turn my back on the tedium of this novel, just as the East Germans turned their backs on the tedium of Soviet life.