內容簡介
內容簡介 Simon Schama, in defence of the essay in the age of Twitter, writes: 'The self-propulsion of a ranging intelligence is the dynamo that drives a powerful essay; the headlong gallop of thought to a destination the reader can't predict and which may not have occurred to the writer when he began.' That power, that propulsion, that surprise is evident in every one of this selection of the very finest of the essays produced over the past 20 years by the Romanian-German Nobel Laureate Herta Müller. She interrogates Communist society – especially in its bizarre Romanian Ceausescu variation – and matters of complicity, secrecy, betrayal, guilt, responsibility, resistance and the power of literature. Her writing is bewitching and convincing; her approach is unswerving, unsparing and undeluded. Her reader is grateful. These are among the most powerful demonstrations of the pen's might exceeding the sword's to be produced in the last forty years in Europe.
作者介紹
作者介紹 Herta Müller Herta Müller was born on 17 August 1953 in Nitzkydorf (Banat Romania). Her parents belonged to the German-speaking minority. Her father was a lorry driver, her mother a peasant. She attended school and university in Temeswar. After refusing to work for the Romanian secret service, the Securitate, she lost her job as translator in a machine factory. Nadirs, her first book, lay around at the publishers for four years and was heavily censored when it was eventually published. The manuscript was smuggled to Germany and published in 1984. In 1987, she emigrated to Germany and has lived in Berlin ever since. She has a string of literary prizes to her name, including the Aspekte Literature Prize (1984), the Kleist Prize (1994), the Prix Aristeion (1995), the Konrad Adenauer prize for literature (2004) and, the Nobel Prize for Literature (2009).