Works of Herta Mueller

A partial list of books by Herta Mueller, winner Thursday of the 2009
Nobel Prize for literature:
  ___
  Works in English, translated from German:
  "The Passport" (1989)
  "The Land of Green Plums" (1996)
  "Traveling on One Leg" (1998)
  "The Appointment" (2001)
  ___
  Works in German:
  "Niederungen" (1984)
  "Drueckender Tango" (1996)
  "Der Mensch ist ein grosser Fasan auf der Welt" (1986)
  "Barfuessiger Februar" (1987)
  "Reisende auf einem Bein" (1989)
  "Der Teufel sitzt im Spiegel" (1991)
  "Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jaeger" (1992)
  "Eine warme Kartoffel ist ein warmes Bett" (1992)
  "Im Haarknoten wohnt eine Dame" (2000)
  "Heimat ist das, was gesprochen wird" (2001)
  "Der Koenig verneigt sich und toetet" (2003)
  "Die blassen Herren mit den Mokkatassen" (2005)
Emigration

It was when she emigrated in 1987 that she became known to wider literary world. She moved to Berlin with her husband the author Richard Wagner.

Communist-era leader Nicolae Ceausescu, was leader of Romania from 1965 until he was overthrown and killed in a revolution in 1989.

Romania suffered extreme shortages of food, fuel, energy and medicines under his dictatorship. He used the feared secret police to control his people.

In a 2007 article for the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau Mueller said Romania had developed "collective amnesia" over its past: "They're pretending that it disappeared into thin air... even though it was home to the most abstruse dictatorship in eastern Europe and after Stalin, the most evil dictator, with a personality cult to rival North Korea's."

Award winner

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH
1989 The Passport
1996 The Land of Green Plums
1998 Traveling on One Leg
2001 The Appointment
Her 1996 novel The Land Of The Green Plums won the German Kleist and the Irish IMPAC award, the richest literary prize in the world.

The book is about a group of friends who become targets of the secret police.

Mueller wrote the book after the death of two of her friends, in which she suspected the secret police's involvement. The writer has said she felt it was her "duty" to write it "in memory of my Romanian friends who were killed under the Ceausescu regime".

She based a central character on one of her closest friends from the Aktionsgruppe Banat. After Mueller moved to Berlin she told the Guardian newspaper her friend visited her and admitted she had been sent by the secret police to warn her to stop criticising the Ceausescu regime.

She also said the friend made a copy of the keys to her apartment, to give to the Securitate.

She has written 19 books mostly in German but some works have been translated into English, French and Spanish.

Her latest book Atemschaukel depicts the exile of German Romanians in the Soviet Union. It is up for this year's German Book Prize, which will be announced on Monday.

Mueller has also lectured at Universities in Europe and the US.

  "Atemschaukel" (2009)