Herta Muller, a Romanian born German author, has won 2009 Nobel Literature Prize. She worked in a factory under Nicolae Ceausescu’s oppressive regime. Now she lives in Germany.
Her debut novel is the collection of short stories Niederungen (1982) which was published outside of Romania, in Germany. in the same year, Drückender Tango was published in Romania. In these two works, Müller depicts life in a small, German-speaking village and the corruption, intolerance and repression to be found there.
The novels Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger (1992), Herztier (1994; The Land of Green Plums, 1996) and Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet (1997; The Appointment, 2001) give, with chiselled details, a portrait of daily life in a stagnated dictatorship. Müller has given guest lectures at universities, colleges and other venues in Paderborn, Warwick, Hamburg, Swansea, Gainsville (Florida), Kassel, Göttingen, Tübingen and Zürich among other places. She lives in Berlin. Since 1995 she has served as a member of Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, in Darmstadt.
Nobel Organization gives this comment on Muller’s works
"who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed"
Works in English
The Passport / translated by Martin Chalmers. – London : Serpent’s Tail, 1989. – Translation of Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt The Land of Green Plums / translated by Michael Hofmann. – New York : Metropolitan Books, 1996. – Translation of HerztierTraveling on One Leg / translated from the German by Valentina Glajar and André Lefevere. – Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, 1998. – Translation of Reisende auf einem Bein
The Appointment / translated by Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm. – New York : Metropolitan Books, 2001. – Translation of Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet
Source: http://nobelprize.org/index.html
