In her works, Muller talks about her experiences in communist Romania, including interrogations, humiliations, persecution, marginalisation and fear of death. Herta Muller was born on the 17th of August 1953 in Nitzchidorf, in western Romania. She attended the Philology Faculty in Timisoara, the city where she also made her debut as a prose writer. Her volume Nadirs, which she finished in 1978, was onlypublished in 1982 after being submitted to the censorship of the communist regime, which cut large portions of the original manuscript.

The uncensored version of the book appeared two years later in the Federal Republic of Germany, which resulted in her being banned from publishing in Romania by the communist authorities. Her refusal to collaborate with the Securitate, the political police of the communist regime, led to even more persecution.

In 1987, Muller emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany and settled in Berlin. She has published over 20 volumes, including “The Land of Green Plums”, “The King Bows and Kills”, and “Is He or Isn't He Ion”, most of which have also been published in Romania. The author says she doesn't belong to a single language or country, but only to herself. Speaking about the Romanian language, she says its metaphors are much more sensual and go straight to the heart of the matter.

On Thursday, when Muller received the Nobel prize in Stockholm, the German press wrote about how she was harassed both by the Romanian Securiate and the feared STASI, the political police in the former Democratic Republic of Germany. The two secret services attempts to silence any form of criticism eventually failed, writes the German press.

Herta Muller and her colleagues could not be deterred from making public their life experiences in their realistic and moving works. The Nobel prize should also be interpreted as recognition of her unyielding attitude. In the years that followed the collapse of communism in Romania, Herta Muller constantly spoke out against the presence of former Securitate torturers and high ranking officials in the forefront of political life in Romania.