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Herta Mueller wins 2009 Nobel literature prize
STOCKHOLM (AP) - October 8, 2009 The decision was expected to keep alive the controversy
surrounding the academy's pattern of awarding the prize to European
writers.
Mueller, a member of Romania's ethnic German minority, was
honored 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 cannot believe it," Mueller
said in a statement released by her publisher in Germany, where she
is widely renowned. "I can't say anything more at the moment."
Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy,
told The Associated Press this week that the secretive Swedish
Academy had been too "eurocentric" in picking winners.
His predecessor, Horace Engdahl, stirred up heated emotions
across the Atlantic when he told the AP in 2008 that "Europe still
is the center of the literary world" and the quality of U.S.
writing was dragged down because authors were "too sensitive to
trends in their own mass culture."
After Mueller was announced, Englund told AP that "If you are
European (it is) easier to relate to European literature. It's the
result of psychological bias that we really try to be aware of.
It's not the result of any program."
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.
Emilia Marta, a 55-year-old teacher who moved into the house in
Romania's Transylvania Banat region where Mueller was born, said
the author has yet to return. The mayor of the 1,600-person village
of Nichtidorf said Mueller would be greeted with honors.
"If she will accept this, of course," Ioan Mascovescu said.
Mueller, whose father served in the Waffen SS during World War
II and whose mother spent five years in a Soviet work camp, 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.
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.
"By giving the award to Herta Mueller, who grew up in a
German-speaking minority in Romania, (the committee) has recognized
an author who refuses to let the inhumane side of life under
communism be forgotten," said Michael Krueger, head of Mueller's
publisher Hanser Verlag.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised Mueller's work, calling
it "outstanding literature" drawn from the experience of life
under a dictatorship.
"Today, 20 years after the fall of the wall, it is a wonderful
message that such high-quality literature about this life
experience is being honored with the literature Nobel Prize," she
told reporters. "We are naturally delighted that Herta Mueller has
found a home in Germany."
Mueller emigrated to Germany with her husband in 1987, two years
before Ceausescu was toppled amid the widening communist collapse
across eastern Europe.
"This prize is the international recognition of the oppression
of what happened in Romania and Eastern Europe," said Romanian
actor Ion Caramitru, an anti-communist who rode atop a tank to the
television station in Bucharest during the 1989 revolt and now
heads the country's national theater.
Most of Mueller's work is in German, but some works have been
translated into English, French and Spanish, including "The
Passport," "The Land of Green Plums," "Traveling on One Leg"
and "The Appointment."
Mueller's latest novel, "Atemschaukel," or "Swinging Breath"
is up for this year's German Book Prize, which will be announced
Monday.
Mueller is the 12th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature.
Recent female winners include Austria's Elfriede Jelinek in 2004
and British writer Doris Lessing in 2007.
It's the first time four women have won Nobel Prizes in the same
year. U.S.-based researchers Elizabeth Blackburn and Carol Greider
were among the medicine winners and the chemistry prize included
Israel's Ada Yonath.
The prize includes a 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) prize and
will be handed out Dec. 10 in the Swedish capital.