German wins Nobel literary prize for post-war works

• Source: Global Times
• [02:38 October 09 2009]
• Comments

Herta Mueller, whose upbringing in Romania inspired poetry and novels, won the Nobel Literature Prize Thursday.

The 56-year-old Romanian-born German national was hailed by the Swedish prize jury as a writer who, "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed."

The permanent secretary of the Nobel Academy, Peter Englund, described Mueller as "a great artist of words."

Mueller's family came from a German-speaking minority in Romania and fled the country two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Her publisher said the prize for Mueller, who grew up under Nicolae Ceausescu's regime as part of the minority, was fitting in the 20th year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

AFP