an ethnic German who was born and raised in Romania. The Nobel committee honored  her, “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed”

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2009/index.html 

The focus of her work is on the trials of life under the Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, whose reign ended with his overthrow and execution 20 years ago.  

In offering thanks for the award, she noted that her fiction was shaped by living under the brutal Ceausescu regime.  

“It’s the topic of all my books,” said Müller, who immigrated to Germany in 1987. “I believe that literature always goes precisely there where the damage to a person has been done. . . . I didn’t choose this topic, it was thrust upon me.”

Müller worked as a translator in a Romanian factory,  but was fired for not cooperating with the secret police, and in the 1970’s she was a member of a group of dissident writers who opposed the Ceausescu regime.

Her first book, a collection of short stories depicting the difficulties of living in a small village like her own, was published in 1982, but was censored by Romanian authorities. An uncensored version was smuggled into Germany, finding critical acclaim.

After a second book, she was prohibited from publishing in Romania, leading to her immigration to Germany.

Mueller’s parents were members of the German-speaking minority in Romania and her father served in the Waffen SS during World War II. After the war ended, many German Romanians were deported to the Soviet Union in 1945, including her mother, who spent five years in a work camp in what is now Ukraine. Müller’s work speaks to being a refugee, being displaced, being without a home.

She is the author of 19 books, and only four – including The Land of the Green Plums, and, most recently “The Appointment” (written in 2001)– have been translated and published in the United States. After winning the Nobel Prize this year, you can bet that will change. Her most recent book, Atemschaukel,

was published in August of 2009, and depicts the exile of German Romanians. My mom called and wants to order it from German Amazon and have Rachel bring it home at Christmas.

Being German myself, and an immigrant, I am very interested in her books.  Just the topic of being dispossessed. Something I can relate to. And I think so many others think of themselves as not belonging. I think of biblical characters never finding a home and specifically Moses trying to get to the Promised Land.

I quickly went  to my library to check out books by Herta Muller. It took a while, but I found two of them – those listed above—and have them on hold. It looks like 9 other people were influenced by the Nobel award as there are 9 other holds so far.  There is only one copy of each of her work.

 I also checked on Amazon and there are the four English translations of her work then the German ones, which I can thanks to my mom and dad read.  http://www.amazon.com/Herta-M%C3%BCller/e/B001JOP1OQ

For more information see the following articles:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125499794241973045.html

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,654210,00.html

The latest was the information on the 2008 Nobel Prize winner  in literature announced by the Swedish Academy – they awarded French novelist J.M.G. Le Clezio 

 the prestigious award in 2008 http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2008/bio-bibl.html  -

. The article appeared in the Sept 2009 edition of the O just before the 2009 Nobel Prizes are to be awarded. Here is the link

http://www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2009/09/fiction_review_desert.html

They spoke about Clezio’s book Desert just translated into English as well as other books, and I tried to get Desert but could not get that one, so I got the Prospector in my hands and have just started reading it. It is rich and poetic and deep and not formulaic.

The question the article in The Oregonian had in The O story is why have  American writers not won this award since Toni Morrison in the early 90’s? I quote from The Oregonian: “The permanent secretary of the Academy inflamed sentiments further when he was quoted saying that U.S. literature is “too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”

I just like to read new books those winning awards are a great place to start. . . and I like to challenge myself with books from various genres and countries and I talked to my son’s teacher Ms. Shannon about this in our parent teacher conference tonight,  and she said I should tell my children what I am doing with books I am choosing to read. Why I read what I read. So, I write this blog with our conversation in mind.

Ms. Shannon also asked for the name of the book I am reading so she could share it with her book group. As I noted, it is  Prospector. And, I quickly wrote this short review for her.

It looks like a challenging read, intriguing, a Nobel Prize winning author. It begins with the protagonist’s love for all things water. It starts like this:

“As far back as I can remember I have listened to the sea: to the sound of it mingling with the wind in the filao needles, the wind that never stopped blowing, even when one left the Shore behind and crossed the sugarcane fields. It is the sound that cradled my childhood. I can hear it now, deep inside me; it will come with me wherever I go.”

– here is Barnes and Noble review  http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Prospector/J-M-G-Le-Clezio/e/9780879239763/

First, I am finishing up my Jodi Picoult book, Nineteen Minutes, as I like to first finish a book before I start a new one. I read another book of Picoult’s this summer and need to review that as well.

Enjoy. Let me know what you think. The start of it tells me it is Nobel prize worthy.  

His new book just out is called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and  it will challenge you to the bones. It will get you thinking about your life and the question that got me was: “If you were to die today, what would die with you?” He talked about his friend who is like 25 years old and she is helping dig  water wells in under developed countries and he is inspired by his friend. And Donald talked about how for a while he was sitting around watching Oprah and sleeping and losing track of a visionn for his life.

Until a movie producer came knocking wanting to make a movie of his life. And he realized that his life is boring and if we are honest and ask the question of our own life what is it about. And he said it is okay to have conflict in our lives.

I loved how he analyzed his life and wondered what he was doing with his life and how he was impacting culture and what he was doing about injustice. He talked about his writing and ministry and the way he said that magazines would criticize his Blue Like Jazz book as being too emergent, and he in true out of the box form said, “I don’t even know that emergent means”- indeed, you cannot put Donald Miller in a box and this book he talks about living outside the box and asking touchg questions about your life and what difference are you making for Christ in the world. 

One of Donald’s big passions is ending fatherlessness and he is on the Obama Task force dealing with this issue. Wow, what an impact he is having. I think of Daniel in the Bible gaining favor with the King. 

Donald Miller is on tour with Susan Isaacs who wrote Angry Conversations with God and I had met her last spring while she was at an Imago Dei book event.

Here is Miller’s blog:  http://donmilleris.com/ for more information

Collins’ poetry makes the ordinary extraordinary. It makes real life magical. It shows the wonder of the day to day every day.

Here is a poem of his called Flock:

Flock By Billy Collins
It has been calculated that each copy of the Gutenburg Bible
required the skins of 300 sheep.

I can see them
squeezed into the holding pen
behind the stone building
where the printing press is housed.

All of them squirming around
to find a little room
and looking so much alike
it would be nearly impossible to count them.

And there is no telling which one of them
will carry the news
that the Lord is a Shepherd,
one of the few things
they already know.

and here’s another:

Invention By Billy Collins

Tonight the moon is a cracker,
with a bite out of it
floating in the night,

and in a week or so
according to the calendar
it will probably look

like a silver football,
and nine, maybe ten days ago
it reminded me of a thin bright claw.

But eventually –
by the end of the month,
I reckon –

it will waste away
to nothing,
nothing but stars in the sky,

and I will have a few nights
to myself,
a little time to rest my jittery pen.