Tales of life behind Iron Curtain secure Nobel literature nod

HERTA MUELLER, a member of Romania’s ethnic German minority who was persecuted for her critical depictions of life behind the Iron Curtain, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature yesterday in an award seen as a nod to the 20th anniversary of communism’s collapse.

Mueller, born in Romania’s Transylvania Banat region, was honoured for work that “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed,” the Swedish Academy said.

“I am very surprised and still can not believe it,” Mueller said. “I can’t say anything more at the moment.”