Nadirs (European Women Writers) - Softcover

Muller, Herta

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803282540 ISBN 13: 9780803282544

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1999

Synopsis

A collection of largely autobiographical stories based on Herta Müllers childhood in the Romanian countryside. Juxtaposing reality and fantasy, nightmares and dark laughter, Nadirs is a collection of largely autobiographical stories based on Herta Müllers childhood in the Romanian countryside. The individual tales reveal a childs often nightmarish impressions of life in her village. Seamlessly mixing reality with dream-like images, they brilliantly convey the inner, troubled life of a child and at the same time capture the violence and corruption of life under an oppressive state. Herta Müller has been one of the most prolific and acclaimed German-language writers of the last decade. She was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature.

About this title

Review:

Muller, who won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for The Land of Green Plums,is considered one of the most gifted contemporary German-language writers, a claim this newly translated collection of stories would seem to prove. Once again, Muller takes us back to Communist Romania. But unlike her previous work, Nadirs is a very personal book, as much about Muller''s own family sagas as it is about the inescapable scares of communism. . . . Originally published in German ten years ago, this book was well worth the wait; it is an important achievement in contemporary Eastern European literature --Library Journal

The 15 stories are melodious but sober in tone, echoing an overwhelmingly oppressive social atmosphere. It's bluntly stated that boys are injured in local factories and mothers' lives are unrelentingly harsh; meanwhile, Müller imbues a trip to the barber or a ride on the intervillage bus with colorful, surreal twists. . . . Most of these impressionistic pieces are bursting with breathtaking, earthy details --Publishers Weekly

The sudden appearance of words in unfamiliar semantic contexts turns her texts into sensual landscapes of beauty and pain. The translator, Sieglinde Lug, has accomplished this in a highly convincing manner and is able to give the reader a taste of Müllers unique language. --Irena E. Fürhoff, International Fiction Review

From the Author:

Herta Müller, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, has been one of the most prolific and acclaimed German-language writers of the last two decades. Born in 1953 in the Banat, a German-language region of Romania, she emigrated to West Berlin in 1987 and currently lives in Berlin.  Sieglinde Lug is a professor emerita of German and comparative literature at the University of Denver.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0803282540
• ISBN 13: 9780803282544
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 126