Award History
| Award | Year | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Nobel Prize in Literature | 2009 | Winner |
About This Book
In Ceaușescu's Romania, a group of young friends live under the constant terror of the Securitate secret police. Their intimate world—of green plums, of love, of whispered conversations—is relentlessly surveilled and destroyed. Drawn from Müller's own experience under the dictatorship, this is one of the essential novels of totalitarianism.
About the Author
Herta Müller is a Romanian-German novelist, poet, and essayist born on August 17, 1953, in Nițchidorf, Timiș County, Romania, to Banat Swabian parents. She grew up in a German-speaking village under the repressive Communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu, and after refusing to collaborate with the Securitate secret police she emigrated to West Germany in 1987, settling in Berlin. Müller's works depict the violence, terror, and everyday oppression experienced by Romania's German minority during Ceaușescu's rule and World War II aftermath, drawing from personal and familial traumas. Read more →
