[Berlin, December 11. Image via Getty]

BERLIN - DECEMBER 11: A young girl makes sugar cookies at a kindergarten of the Rudolf Steiner Waldorfschule on December 11, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. Each year Berlin's kindergarten children get into the festive spirit and prepare cookies and biscuits prior to Christmas. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

[Port Elizabeth, South Africa; December 7. Image via Getty]

A group of young South African children in Port Elizabeth wave flags (Germany) of the countries that are taking part in the 2010 Fifa Football World Cup in South Africa from June 11 to July 11, 2010. AFP PHOTO / ALEXANDER JOE (Photo credit should read ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Hornow, Germany; December 2. Image via Getty]

An employee of a chocolate Santa factory carries trays of freshly made produce in the eastern German city of Hornow on December 2, 2009. The Christmas season is in full swing with markets, lights and trees been set up all over the country. AFP PHOTO DDP / MICHAEL URBAN GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read MICHAEL URBAN/AFP/Getty Images)

[Munich, November 17. Image via Getty]

MUNICH, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 17: Students shout slogans as they walk past the university of technology during a protest march on November 17, 2009 in Munich, Germany. Following massive protests this summer German students across the country return to the streets to demonstrate against the alleged failings of the educational system. (Photo by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images)

[Berlin, November 9. Image via Getty]

German girls paint a peace symbol on a replica of Berlin Wall standing in the center of Warsaw as a part of celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9, 2009. AFP PHOTO WOJTEK RADWANSKI (Photo credit should read WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

[Berlin, November 8. Image via Getty]

BERLIN - NOVEMBER 09: A visitor photographs over the edge of a still-existing section of the Berlin Wall into the so-called 'death strip,' where East German border guards had the order to shoot anyone attempting to flee into West Berlin, at the Bernauer Strasse memorial on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall on November 9, 2009 in Berlin, Germany. The city of Berlin is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, which led to the end of communist rule in East Germany and later on the reunification of East and West Germany, with a spectacular event at the Brandenburg Gate and the participation of international leaders. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

[Berlin, November 8. Image via Getty]

A girl leaps up to burst a bubble in Mauer Park in central Berlin, on November 8, 2009. Germany is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 2009 with many world leaders coming to Berlin to mark the event. AFP PHOTO/Leon Neal (Photo credit should read Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images)

[Berlin, November 5. Image via Getty]

A woman walks past a billboard featuring portraits of people and their recollections of the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, at Berlin's KaDeWe (Kaufhaus des Westens) department store, rebaptised KaDeBe (Kaufhaus der Berliner, meaning Department store of Berliners instead of the usual Department store of the West) for the occasion, on November 5, 2009. Berlin has caught wall fever ahead of celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall on November 9. Sign in window reads: 'Where were you on the 9th of November 1989?' AFP PHOTO / JOHN MACDOUGALL (Photo credit should read JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images)

[Bad Toelz, Germany; November 6. Image via Getty]

BAD TOELZ, GERMANY - NOVEMBER 06: People in traditional Bavarian dress take part in the so called Leonhardi Ride, a horse pilgrimage in honor of Saint Leonard de Noblac, on November 6, 2009 in Bad Toelz, Germany. People in festively decorated horse-drawn vehicles pilgrimage to the Calvary Hill and pray to Saint Leonhard, patron saint of the cattle. The procession is known as the biggest and most beautyful of its kind. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

[Berlin, November 4. Image via Getty]

A woman playing the part of an angel takes part in a dress rehearsal for a theatre piece of a rooftop in Berlin on November 4, 2009. The theatre piece will take place on November 9, 2009 during the 20th anniversary celebrations of the fall of the Wall. AFP PHOTO DDP / MICHAEL KAPPELER GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images)

[Neubiberg, Germany; October 23. Image via Getty]

A woman runs with her dog across the closed runway of an old airfield through the early morning fog in Neubiberg near Munich, southern Germany on October 23, 2009. The strip is now being used as a recreation area for the surrounding communities. AFP PHOTO DDP/ JOERG KOCH GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read JOERG KOCH/AFP/Getty Images)

Mueller's first book, a short story collection called Niederungen (Nadirs), was published in Romania in 1982. It depicted the difficulties of life in an ethnically German Romanian village, and was quickly censored by the Communist government of Nicolae Ceausescu. The government eventually barred her from publishing in Romania at all, and Mueller left for Germany in 1987 with her husband (coincidentally named Richard Wagner). Since then she has written a number of essays, short stories, novels, including The Land of Green Plums and The Appointment.

Much of Mueller's work deals with the difficulties inherent in her German-Romanian heritage. According to Larry Wolff, who reviewed The Land of Green Plums in 1996, most of Romania's ethnic Germans returned to Germany either during or after the rule of Ceausescu. Wolff writes that "this marks the end of many communities that had survived from the 18th-century reign of the Empress Maria Theresa," and that Mueller "conveys a certain sadness over the historical implications of emigration, the impending doom of her own native culture and society" (he also notes that Mueller is one of the few female authors to write about life in Communist Eastern Europe). Yet Mueller, whose father was a member of the Waffen SS (like, interestingly, former Nobel winner Gunter Grass), also betrays in her writing a certain ambivalence about her Germanness. The narrator of The Land of Green Plums mentions how embarrassed she feels in the presence of Romanian-Jewish Holocaust survivors:

It was Herr Feyerabend. He was shuffling his feet and pulled a white handkerchief out of his pocket. I withdrew my head, as if the white handkerchief could feel that someone like myself was staring at a Jew.

But any shame Mueller felt at Germany's fascist past did not prevent her from criticizing Romania's Communist regime — or the vestiges of this regime that outlasted the fall of Ceausescu. In a 2007 essay on Romania's entry into the EU, Mueller accused the country of "collective amnesia" and of ignoring the continued influence of the officially disbanded Securitate, Ceausescu's secret service. She wrote,

A former dissident gets a job in the public service and is summoned for a swearing in. And when he opens the door, his former Securitate interrogator is standing there to receive his oath on the democratic constitution. Or a former political prisoner applies for a loan at the savings bank in a town. The bank director who tells him that the loan has not been granted was once his prison director.

In Brussels, they'll say the former prisoner should go to another bank. If there's a bank in the town, the EU criteria are fulfilled. The question is: who's the director?

Mueller's criticism of Ceausescu and his supporters notwithstanding, Pete Ayrton, one of her publishers, says, "she writes extraordinary accounts of being an ethnic minority in a totalitarian regime. But this is not overtly political writing; it's very poetic and elliptical. She's an extraordinary writer." A passage from The Land of Green Plums reveals this poetic quality:

Under the pillows in the beds were six pots of mascara. Six girls spat into the pots and stirred the soot with toothpicks until the black paste grew sticky. Then they opened their eyes wide. The toothpicks scraped against their eyelids, their lashes grew black and thick. But an hour later gray gaps began to crack open in the eyelashes. The saliva dried up and the soot crumbled onto their cheeks.

Wolff points out that "since an important purpose of the novel is to represent cultural survival through the German language, any translation necessarily obscures some of the work's significance." At the same time, Mueller's words, even in English, bear out the Swedish Academy's claim that her work, "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." Perhaps now this "wonderful, neglected writer," as Ayrton calls her, will receive more international attention.

Herta Mueller Wins Nobel Prize In Literature [AP, via NYT]
Herta Müller Takes Nobel Prize For Literature [Guardian]
Strangers In A Strange Land [NYT]
Romania's Collective Amnesia [Sightandsign.com]
Novelist Herta Müller Wins Nobel Prize In Literature [Mediabistro]

[Aarhus, Denmark; September 27. Image via Getty]

Denmark's Laerke Moller (C) challenges Nadine Krause (L) and Nina Wörz (R) of Germany in the bronze match in the GF World Cup women handball tournament on September 27, 2009 in Aarhus. AFP PHOTO / Claus Fisker/SCANPIX DANMARK 2009) (Photo credit should read CLAUS FISKER/AFP/Getty Images)

[Berlin, September 22. Image via Getty]

A visitor looks at the installation 'The Perfect Sculpture' by Norwegian artist Morten Viskum at the exhibition 'Berliner Liste 2009' (Berlin's list 2009) on September 22, 2009 in Berlin. The international art fair for contemporary art and photography takes place from September 24 to September 27 in Berlin. AFP PHOTO DDP/ AXEL SCHMIDT GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read AXEL SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

[Wilhelmshaven, Germany; September 22. Image via Getty]

A sailor says good bye to his daughter before the departure of the German frigate 'Augsburg' in the northern German city of Wilhelmshaven on September 22, 2009. The frigate is taking part in the anti-terrorism operation 'Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)' off the Horn of Africa. AFP PHOTO DDP / DAVID HECKER GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read DAVID HECKER/AFP/Getty Images)

[Munich, September 20. Image via Getty]

A participant carries a sunflower during the marksmen's parade on the second day of the Oktoberfest beer festival on September 20, 2009 at the 'Theresienwiese' in Munich, southern Germany. The world famous Oktoberfest takes place from September 19 to October 4, 2009 and is with over six million visitors the world's largest folk festival. AFP PHOTO Joe KLAMAR (Photo credit should read JOE KLAMAR/AFP/Getty Images)

[Hausen ob Verena, Germany; September 16. Image via Getty]

Two woman walk around an installation featuring 1000 yellow plastic meerkats in a field near the southern German town of Hausen ob Verena on September 16, 2009. The installation named 'Works Outing' (Betriebsausflug) by German artist Ottmar Hoerl is on show for the next four weeks. AFP PHOTO DDP / MICHAEL LATZ GERMANY OUT (Photo credit should read MICHAEL LATZ/AFP/Getty Images)

[Bad Hindelang, Germany; September 11. Image via Getty]

BAD HINDELANG, GERMANY - SEPTEMBER 11: Farmers lead cattle down from the mountains on September 11, 2009 in Bad Hindelang, Germany. Up to 800 cattle returned to the valley after spending 100 days in the mountains over the summer months. (Photo by Miguel Villagran/Getty Images)