Congrats, Herta Müller

Herta Müller, a Romanian-born German writer, was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Much of Müller’s writing — from what I’ve gleaned from the NYT article; I’d of course never heard of her before today — is influenced by her upbringing and life in totalitarian Romania, focusing on the hardships of living under a repressive government. The Swedish Academy said Müller, “with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.”

Müller is the 13th German language writer and 12th woman to win the award.