Mode Herta Müller: Politics and Aesthetics by Bettina Brandt NEUF

Two languages-German and Romanian-inform the novels, essays, and collage poetry of Nobel laureate Herta Muller. Describing her writing as "autofictional," Muller depicts the effects of violence, cruelty, and terror on her characters based on her own experiences in Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceausescu regime.

Herta Muller: Politics and Aesthetics explores Mullers writings from different literary, cultural, and historical perspectives. Part 1 features Mullers Nobel lecture, five new collage poems, and an interview with Ernest Wichner, a German-Romanian author who has traveled with her and sheds light on her writing. Parts 2 and 3, featuring essays by scholars from across Europe and the United States, address the political and poetical aspects of Mullers texts. Contributors discuss life under the Romanian Communist dictatorship while also stressing key elements of Mullers poetics, which promises both self-conscious formal experimentation and political intervention.

One of the first books in English to thoroughly examine Mullers writing, this volume addresses audiences with an interest in dissident, exile, migration, experimental, and transnational literature.