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.”

The decision was expected to keep alive the controversy surrounding the academy’s pattern of awarding the prize to European writers.

“If you are European (it is) easier to relate to European literature,” said Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. “It’s the result of psychological bias that we really try to be aware of. It’s not the result of any programme.”

Mueller, 56, made her debut in 1982 with a collection of short stories titled Niederungen, or Nadirs, depicting the harshness of life in a small, German-speaking village in Romania. It was promptly censored by the communist government.

In 1984 an uncensored version was smuggled to Germany, where it was published and devoured by readers. That work was followed by Oppressive Tango in Romania, but she was eventually prohibited from publishing inside her country for her criticism of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s rule and its feared secret police, the Securitate.

“The Romanian national press was very critical of these works while, outside of Romania, the German press received them very positively,” the Academy said.

Mueller, whose father served in the Waffen SS during World War II, is the third European in a row to win the prize and the 10th German, joining Guenter Grass in 1999 and Heinrich Boell in 1972.

“I think that there is an incredible force in what she writes, she has a very, very unique style,” Englund said. “You read half the page and you know at once that it’s Herta Mueller.”

Though Englund said the award was not timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, that’s how it was perceived by many observers.