Thursday, October 8, 2009

Herta Müller awarded Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009 has been awarded to the Romanian-born German author Herta Müller who, in the words of the award citation, "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".

In The Guardian, Alison Flood writes:
Although Müller left Romania over 20 years ago, she returns constantly to the themes of oppression, exile and dictatorship in her novels and poems, which also include The Appointment, about a young woman during Ceausescu's regime who works in a clothes factory, and sews notes into the suits of men bound for Italy, saying "marry me". Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger, published in English as The Passport, follows the story of a village miller in a German-speaking Romanian village, who applies for permission to emigrate to West Germany. Müller's latest novel Atemschaukel (Everything I Possess I Carry With Me) was published in August, and follows a 17-year-old boy who is deported to a Ukrainian labour camp. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called it "phenomenal, moving and humbling novel, perhaps the most memorable read of the autumn".

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