Excerpt from The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The coal oven was a moody piece of work and needed constant attention. There would be no use in firing it up this morning. It would take a good half hour and periodic poking of the embers even to warm the tiles, an hour before the bedroom was fully heated. He'd be in Hohenschönhausen by then. After Hohenschönhausen, the café, then an ordinary day at his desk, followed by another press conference in the evening he'd been ordered to observe. Thursday meant Ketwurst day at the Ministry cafeteria, something to look forward to.

The woman on the phone the night before, a low-level secretary no doubt, had all but screamed at him, sounding shrill and panic-stricken, like a woman in the habit of losing her child in strange places. Hysteria was trickling down the ranks. He was to report to Hohenschönhausen jail for the interrogation of someone or other, she said. Bitteschön, Dankeschön, gute Nacht, Kamerad Zeiger. It had been more than twenty years since he was last at the jail. 

There was another thump next door, followed by a gargling of pipes, giggles, and splashing sounds, all of which suggested that Schreibmüller and his guest had moved their operation to the tub. Zeiger had the urge to pound the wall, but he resisted and rose from the bed. By the time he reached the window, dots were dancing before his eyes, things that were not there. Then Lara's face appeared, a prim and taunting smile, which caused the air to escape from his lungs with an awful hacking sound. He found the windowsill and steadied himself, peering into blackness. Outside, the hollow rhythm of heels on cobblestones, the unoiled wheel of a bicycle, traffic. Inside, the sound of his own heart furiously pumping blood to his brain by way of his ears.

Only a few windows in the building opposite glowed with light. He saw no movements in them. Through a gap in the buildings, the TV tower antenna blinked with the soothing rhythm of a digital clock. The night sky was shrouded in clouds. Not long ago, streetlamps had been outfitted with high-watt bulbs in emergency orange. A color so glaring it obliterated any trace of a star. Streetlamps in West Berlin had retained their soft yellow glow, but, as Zeiger had noticed during occasional visits, the night sky there was still as tremendous and black as their own. He did not register that he was smoking until he had opened the window and rested his elbows on the iced ledge outside.

The bakery below was closed—it was not yet five o'clock—but a line had already formed. Seven early risers stood in thick coats and raised collars, their faces and shoulders turned against the wind. The streetlamp threw a distressing light on the scene, adding to it an air of quiet catastrophe. By Zeiger's usual time, the line would have swollen and dispersed, and the bakery would have closed again, leaving a few latecomers to pace the corner like stray dogs. A woman in a towering ushanka arrived and placed herself at the end of the line, raising its count to eight. A man acknowledged her presence with a nod, then turned again to face the front of the line. Limited food and people trusting strangers with the naked planes of their backs. The pinnacle of human evolution. Zeiger smoked his cigarette down to the filter and tossed the butt out the window. After a brief flight it landed, spraying the ground with sparks, and died. No one looked up to seek out its origin.

The kitchen greeted him with a new shade of darkness and the bitter smell of cooked cabbage. He turned on the overhead light, then dropped an egg into a pot of water, stood over it as it boiled. He filled the coffee cooker, added a spoonful of coffee, put it on the stove, waited. This was not coffee. It was coffee, pea flour, and disgrace. This was Kaffee Mix and tasted like a nosebleed. One bad harvest in Brazil, a coffee shortage, and the largest revolts the Republic had seen since 1953. An entire nation with the jitters. Even well-stocked Intershops for foreigners and Party and Ministry officials had not sold real coffee in years. More than real coffee, Zeiger missed sweetbread loaves, which people now bought in bulk as exchange presents for relatives who sent real coffee from the West. There'd been talks of sweetbread-gifting prohibitions, which he had supported, but the Party had voted against it. He did not remember when he'd last seen a sweetbread loaf at the store. He'd have liked to buy one for Lara.

Excerpted from The Standardization of Demoralization Procedures by Jennifer Hofmann. Copyright © 2020 by Jennifer Hofmann. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.