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Herta Muller may have been a little-known Romanian-born German novelist and poet but publishing houses from around the world have been scrabbling to translate her work after she claimed the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Only four of Muller’s 15 works of fiction have so far been translated into English but by all indication that is about to change. Muller, 56, whose works focus on describing life under Nicolae Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime, expressed her surprise at receiving the honour, saying: "I still can’t quite believe it." She is now set to be a global phenomenon once the "Nobel effect" takes place. A spokeswoman from her German publisher, Karl Hauser, said they had been fielding phone calls from people expressing interest in obtaining her books in translation. Pete Ayrton, at Serpent’s Tail, the first English publisher to translate Muller’s work, The Passport, in 1989, said up to only 20,000 copies of the book had been sold in 20 years, although he expected that number to rise substantially after the book was reissuedthis month. He said he had seen a similar effect take place after Elfriede Jelinek, author of The Piano Teacher (adapted for film by Michael Haneke), won the prize in 2004. "We obviously expect to sell large quantities of The Passport in the UK. I suspect every publisher is going to get into some fierce bidding (for more translations). It means a lot to be a Nobel prize winner and it is the job of the Nobel prize (committee) to bring to wider public attention writers that are neglected," he said. Mr Ayrton added that he had been struck by the beauty of the book, which is about a woman who, during Ceausescu’s regime, works in a clothes factory and sews notes into the suits of men bound for Italy that read "marry me". He said: "There is a wonderful evocation of a totalitarian regime based on everyday reality but it has a surreal edge, rather than social realism. That is part of its greatness." Muller is the 12th woman to receive the Nobel prize since it was established in 1901. Born in 1953 in Romania, she refused to co-operate with Ceausescu’s Securitate and lost her job as a result. She was the subject of threats until she emigrated to Berlin in 1987, where she still lives. She has already received Germany’s most prestigious prize, the Kleist award, as well as the Franz Kafka prize and the Impac award. She has continued to write novels and poetry with themes of oppression, exile and dictatorship. The Swedish academy commended both her poetry and prose and said she "depicts the landscape of the dispossessed". Fiona Sampson, editor of Poetry Review, said she had written some of her novels, courageously, under Ceausescu, rather than in the safety of Germany: "Very few writers in the world today are able to write like her in terms of the quality of her work, as well as her ability to bear witness. She is an extraordinary brave dissident who is also an extraordinary writer." Two other novels – The Appointment and Children of Ceausescu, have been translated by American publishers. Her current novel, Atemschaukel, set in Romania during the Second World War, has sold 40,000 copies in Germany since its publication this August. — By arrangement with The Independent
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The final acts
of Thomas Cromwell’s tale, as the arriviste fixer who opened
every door for his master Henry VIII, remain untold. But this is
a novel from an author who credits readers with the nous to
foresee the end of a story — or of history’s sick joke —
from its beautifully rendered beginnings.