Alert! South Africans starved of 2009 Nobel literature prize winner Herta Müller’s fiction will soon have cause to celebrate: Penguin is releasing her best-known title, The Land of Green Plums – translated by Michael Hoffmann – in a new edition at the end of this month.
More from the Penguins:
Widely regarded as Müller’s best novel, The Land of Green Plums is a beautifully written and unflinching autobiographical portrayal of life under the totalitarian regime of Ceauşescu’s Romania.
Set in Romania at the height of Ceauşescu’s reign of terror, The Land of Green Plums tells the story of a group of young students, each of whom has left the impoverished provinces in search of better prospects in the city. It is a profound illustration of a totalitarian state which comes to inhabit every aspect of life; to the extent that everyone, event the strongest, must either bend to the oppressors, or resist them and perish.
About the author
Born in Romania in 1953, Herta Müller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceausescu’s Secret Police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin. A renowned novelist, poet and essayist, Müller won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009.
The Land of the Green Plums will be available from end November 2009 for a recommended retail price R140.
Book details
Photo courtesy The Global Herald
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