Herta Müller, 2009 Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, and the Story of her Ancestors' Migration

On December 10, Herta Müller accepted the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature in a ceremony in Stockholm. When the award winner was announced in the fall, many asked: “Who is Herta Müller?” Her selection may have come as surprise, but the timing was no coincidence. 2009, after all, is the year of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in Europe, and much of Herta Müller’s work focuses on life in Romania under the repressive Ceauşescu regime. Her perspective is that of a member of the Romanian-German minority population, and she writes in German.
Herta Müller grew up in the small village of Nitchidorf in Romania in a German-speaking family and a German-speaking community that was founded by immigrants from Southwest Germany over 200 years ago...
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Image 1: germanyinfo.de; Image 2: nitzkydorf.de