The Land of Green Plums - Softcover

Herta Müller

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0810115972 ISBN 13: 9780810115972

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Muller takes an unflinching look at the alienation and complexity of a rapidly changing Eastern Europe, focusing on a group of young friends in Ceaucescu's Romania.

About this title

Review:

Like the narrator of her novel The Land of Green Plums, Herta Muller grew up a German minority in Ceausescu's Romania, which she eventually left to settle in Germany. Her own experience lends credibility to the voice of her young narrator, who inhabits a deprived police state in which minorities such as the ethnic Germans suffer persecution beyond the quotidian oppressions of Ceausescu's regime. The title refers to the young woman's observations of the swaggering policemen who wolf down plums from the city trees, even while they're still green; the act serves as a symbol of greed, arbitrary power, and stupidity. Although an element of the story is survival, achieved by clinging to the German culture and language, the novel also confronts the older characters' sympathy with the Nazis. Nevertheless, Muller's fictional heroine finds salvation, as she herself did, in modern Germany.

About the Author:

Born in Romania in 1953, Herta Müller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceausescu's Secret Police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin. The recipient of the European Literature Prize, she won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for The Land of Green Plums.

About this edition

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0810115972
• ISBN 13: 9780810115972
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 266