Almanac of Story Tellers: Herta Muller

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of Aug. 17th

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    It is the 229th day of the year, leaving 136 days remaining in 2022. 

   

    On this date in 1953, the German poet and novelist Herta Müller was born in Nitchidorf, Romania.

    She told her stories about the harsh and bitter life many were suffering through during the totalitarian regime in Romania under Nicolae Ceauşescu. Her writings included the violence and torture, the disdain for human rights and dignity, and the oppressive censorship and pervasive surveillance under his regime.

    She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009, with the committee saying she depicted "the landscape of the dispossessed (with) the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose." Her work has been described as "lively, poetic, corrosive," Another critic said her "distinctive prose and world view are shaped by the silence and suppression that taught her to write." 

    Müller could write about those times because she lived through them. Before she was born, her parents were sent to forced labor camps in Romania, and when released, became part of the German-speaking minority. Two collections of short stories, Niederungen (Nadirs, in English) and Drückender Tango (Oppressive Tango, in English) she published there as a young adult were censored, and she was forbidden to publish anything in Romania.  She eventually fled the country in 1987 and settled in Berlin.

    There, her books already had a following, and her first novel, Der Mensch ist ein grosser Fasan auf der Welt (The Passport, in English) had been published there the previous year.

    The year she won the Nobel Prize is the same year she published perhaps her best book, Atemschaukel (The Hunger Angel, in English), a searing account of a young man's journey to a gulag in the Soviet Union. It was based on the experiences of the poet, Oskar Pastior, and her mother.

    Müller lives and write in Berlin.