The Valley of Unknowing

Philip Sington

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780393239447
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

"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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Also by Philip Sington
• FOREWORD
• PART ONE
• PART TWO
• PART THREE
• PART FOUR
• PART FIVE
• PART SIX
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• Copyright