The Curse of the Drinking Class » Herta Müller http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com Book Blog of Lists Mon, 28 Jun 2010 19:23:30 +0000 en hourly 1 Müller follows minority suit to win Nobel for Literature http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/minority-muller-follows-suit-to-win-the-nobel-prize-for-literature-2009/ http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/2009/10/minority-muller-follows-suit-to-win-the-nobel-prize-for-literature-2009/#comments Sat, 10 Oct 2009 18:55:32 +0000 admin http://thecurseofthedrinkingclass.com/?p=174 With French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio in 2008, Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek in 2004 and Hungarian Jewish author Imre Kertész in 2002, recent winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature show a common trend towards the minority. Herta Müller, however, shows this favouratism to be more than the academy’s social conscience.

In the wake of atrocities perpetrated in the name of nation and race, individuals were forced to form their identities not only without but against these categories – Herta Müller

In the wake of atrocities perpetrated in the name of nation and race, individuals were forced to form their identities not only without but against these categories – Herta Müller

As a minority German-speaking Romanian forced into emigration at the hands of oppressive leader Ceausescu’s Securitate, Herta Müller is perfectly positioned to capture the cruelty of those divested of their national identity and displaced by autocracy. Through her prose and poetry, Müller details the harsh conditions of Romanian ethnic Germans in Communist Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu as well as persecution by a Stalinist Soviet.

After completing her studies in Romanian and German literature at the Timişoara University, Müller worked as a translator for an engineering factory, but was later dismissed for refusing to be recruited as an informant for the Communist regime’s secret police. Later forced to leave the country as a result of political pressure and threats by the Securitate, Müller and her husband relocated to Germany where she became double outsider, using a minority language to expose fascism, intolerance and corruption.

Her novel Hertzier (or Land of Green Plums) recounts in fiction the issues faced by writers and the governments determined to censor them. After more than 20 literary awards, a few translations into English, the minority writer eloquently exposes the vampirism of tyranny by winning the 2009 Nobel Prize for literature.

Click here to read an excerpt from Müller’s Everything I won I Carry With Me.

By Jason Esch

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