Herta Müller

Herta Müller (born August 17, 1953, Nițchidorf, Romania) is a Romanian-born German writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009 for her works revealing the harshness of life in Romania under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu. The award cited Müller for depicting “the landscape of the dispossessed” with “the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose.”

Müller, of German Swabian descent, grew up in Banat, a German-speaking region of totalitarian Romania. She attended the University of Timișoara and, as a student, became involved with Aktionsgruppe Banat, a group of writers fighting for freedom of speech. After graduating, she worked from 1977 to 1979 as a translator at a machine factory, a job from which she was fired for refusing to cooperate with the Securitate, the notoriously vast and ruthless Romanian secret police. Her first book, a collection of short stories titled Niederungen (1982; Nadirs), was censored by the Romanian government, but she won a following in Germany when the complete version of the book was smuggled out of the country. After publishing a second book of stories, Drückender Tango (1984; “Oppressive Tango”)—which, like her first collection, depicted frankly the general misery of life in a small Romanian village similar to her own German-speaking hometown—she was forbidden to publish again in Romania, and in 1987 she emigrated with her husband, author Richard Wagner, and moved to Germany.

Her first novel, Der Mensch ist ein grosser Fasan auf der Welt (The Passport), was published in Germany in 1986. Although her circumstances had changed, her work continued to present and examine the formative experiences of her life: themes such as totalitarianism and exile pervade her work. Her style was described by Romanian journalist Emil Hurezeanu as “lively, poetic, [and] corrosive.” Among Müller’s later novels were Reisende auf einem Bein (1989; Traveling on One Leg), Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger (1992; The Fox Was Ever the Hunter), Herztier (1994; The Land of Green Plums), and Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet (1997; The Appointment). In 1998 Müller received the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (the world’s richest literary prize) for The Land of Green Plums. The novel Atemschaukel (The Hunger Angel) was published in 2009.

In addition to fiction, she published volumes of poetry and essays, including in the latter category Hunger und Seide (1995; “Hunger and Silk”), Der König verneigt sich und tötet (2003; “The King Bows and Kills”), and Immer derselbe Schnee und immer derselbe Onkel (2011; “Always the Same Snow and Always the Same Uncle”).