Herta Müller

In 2009, Herta Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for works that combine “the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicting the landscape of the dispossessed”.

Born in 1953 in Niţchidorf, a German-speaking village in western Romania, Müller studied German and Romanian literature at the University of Timişoara, then joined the Aktionsgruppe Bannat, an alliance of Romanian and German authors in Transylvania dedicated to seeking freedom of expression under the Ceauceşcu dictatorship.

“Lately I’m being summoned more and more often: ten sharp on Tuesday, ten sharp on Saturday, on Wednesday, Monday. As if years were a week, I’m amazed that winter comes so close on the heels of summer.”

Refusing to co-operate with Ceauseşcu’s Securitate while working as a translator in a machine factory, she lost her job and suffered repeated threats before leaving for Germany in 1987.

“Müller’s language is the purest poetry—every sentence is a poem or a painting.”

Her work includes: Nadirs, The Passport, The Land of Green Plums, Traveling on One Leg, The Appointment, and Everything I Possess I Carry With Me.

Herta Müller lives in Berlin.

Bibliography

Nadirs (1999)
Oppressive Tango (1984)
The Passport, Serpent's Tail (1989)
Barefoot February (1987)
The Absolute Wasteman novella (1987)
Traveling on One Leg (1998)
How Perception Invents Itself (1990)
The Devil is Sitting in the Mirror (1991)
Even Back Then, the Fox Was the Hunter (1992)
A Warm Potato Is a Warm Bed (1992)
The Guard Takes His Comb (1993)
Arrived As If Not There (1994)
The Land of Green Plums (1996)
Hunger and Silk (1995)
In a Trap (1996)
The Appointment (2001)
The Foreign View, or Life Is a Fart in a Lantern (1999)
A Lady Lives in the Hair Knot, poetry (2000)
Home Is What Is Spoken There (2001)
A Good Person Is Worth As Much As A Piece Of Bread (2001)
The King Bows and Kills, essays (2003)
The Pale Gentlemen with their Espresso Cups (2005)
Is He or Isn't He Ion (2005)
Everything I Possess I Carry With Me (2009)