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A Nobel for Tales of Tyranny

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Romanian-born German novelist Herta M¨¹ller, praised for her detailed portraits of daily life and persecution behind the Iron Curtain, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature. Ms. M¨¹ller, whose body of Jewelry work is heavily influenced by her life in Romania under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, is the 12th woman to win the prize and the first German-speaking author since 2004, when Austrian novelist and playwright Elfriede Jelinek was the recipient. Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy hailed her depictions of "the landscape of the dispossessed" with "the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose." The Swedish Academy's pick for the prize surprised many who expected it to go to an American instead of a European writer this year. Philip Roth and Joyce Carol Oates had been considered favorites. Many saw the selection of the relatively obscure Ms. M¨¹ller also as an acknowledgement of the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism. Speaking at a press conference in Berlin, Ms. M¨¹ller, 56 years old, said she was still in a state of disbelief since learning the news at her home Thursday morning. "I know it, but I still don't believe it," she said. The prize, she added, wasn't so much about her "but about the books." Her life's work, she said, has been to Pandora Jewelry explore the effects of totalitarianism and repression on humanity. She said she counted herself not among writers "who pick a theme but the kind who has one happen to them." Much of her work, written in her German mother tongue, is shaped by her experience as an ethnic minority. Ms. M¨¹ller grew up as part of Romania's German-speaking community, descendants of Germans encouraged to settle the eastern fringes of the Habsburg empire in the 18th century. Her latest novel "Atemschaukel," published this year and translated as "Everything I Possess, I Carry with Me," depicts the exile of German Romanians in the Soviet Union. Ms. M¨¹ller, a critic of Romania's totalitarian regime, left the country for Germany in 1987 after being censored and, she says, repeatedly threatened by its secret police. But she continued to wrestle with themes of oppression and exile in her work. The impact of the Nobel award was felt immediately. On Thursday at 7 a.m. Eastern time, "The Land of Green Plums" ranked No. 56,359 on Amazon.com Inc.'s list of best sellers; by 11:30 a.m., it was No. 47, and around 5:30 p.m., it was No. 7. Sara Bershtel, publisher of Metropolitan Books, which published "The Land of Green Plums" and "The Appointment," said that Ms. M¨¹ller's books create an atmosphere of suspicion that becomes increasingly intense. "Her work is very concentrated, very spare." Metropolitan Panodra Beads Books is now reprinting both titles. "Her work is a little dense for American readers, because it is so layered," said Philip Boehm, who co-translated "The Appointment" and has translated numerous German and Polish works into English. "The books are more atmospheric than plot driven, and she focuses on the psychology of her characters and the surrounding environment." Ms. M¨¹ller said she didn't anticipate Mens Watches that becoming a Nobel laureate would stifle her literary ambitions. "Every time I finish a book, I say never again," she said, "and two years later I start writing again."