This volume is a critical companion to the works of Herta Muller, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009. Muller (1953-) is a Romanian-German novelist, essayist and producer of collages whose work has been compared with that of W.G. Sebald and Franz Kafka. The Nobel Committee described her [...]
Set in Romania at the height of Ceauescu's reign of terror, "The Land of Green Plums" tells the story of a group of young people who leave the impoverished province for the city in search of better prospects and camaraderie. But their hopes are ravaged, because the city, no less than the countryside[...]
From the winner of the IMPAC Award and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, a fierce and devastating novel about a young woman's discovery of betrayal in the most intimate reaches of her life
"I've been summoned. Thursday, ten sharp." Thus begins a day in the life of a young factory worker during[...]
Two languages - German and Romanian - inform the novels, essays, and collage poetry of Nobel laureate Herta Muller. Describing her writing as "autofictional," Muller depicts the effects of violence, cruelty, and terror on her characters based on her own experiences in Communist Romania under the rep[...]
Juxtaposing reality and fantasy, nightmares and dark laughter, "Nadirs" is a collection of largely autobiographical stories based on Herta Muller's childhood in the Romanian countryside. The individual tales reveal a child's often nightmarish impressions of life in her village. Seamlessly mixing rea[...]
A masterful new novel from the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize, hailed for depicting the "landscape of the dispossessed" with "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose" (Nobel Prize Committee)It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to[...]
Irene is a fragile woman born to a German family in Romania, who has recently emigrated from her native country to West Germany. Politically and socially isolated, Irene moves within the orbit of three troubled men, while simultaneously embarking on an inner exploration of exile, homeland, and ident[...]
A masterful new novel from the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize, hailed for depicting the "landscape of the dispossessed" with "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose" (Nobel Prize Committee)It was an icy morning in January 1945 when the patrol came for seventeen-year-old Leo Auberg to[...]
A masterful new novel from the Nobel Prize-winner, who depicts the 'landscape of the dispossessed' with 'the concentration of poetry and frankness of prose' (Nobel Committee)[...]
'I've been summoned, Thursday, ten sharp'. So begins one day in the life of a young clothing-factory worker during Ceaucescu's totalitarian regime. She has been questioned before; but this time she knows it will be worse. Her crime? Sewing notes into the linings of men's suits bound for Italy. 'Marr[...]
'I know you'll return'. These are his grandmother's last words to him. He has them in his head as he boards the truck at 3am on a freezing mid-January morning in 1945. They keep him company during the long journey to Russia. They keep him alive - through hunger, pain, and despair - during his time [...]
Paperback outing for the first novel from Muller since she won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature: a fierce and finely-wrought novel about a young Romanian woman's discovery of betrayal in the most intimate reaches of her life[...]
A Romanian village is caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu's dictatorship and the temptations of the West in this novel, which describes in detail the dreams and superstitions, conflicts and oppression of a forgotten region, the Banat in the Danube Plain.[...]
2009 Nobel Laureate Herta Muller presents a superb new novel that delves into the horrors endured by Romanian Germans during Stalin's regime. Her book stems from interviews with the poet Oskar Pastior (imprisoned from 1945 to 1949) and other Gulag survivors. "Shocked that, in the depths of winter, I[...]