Herta Müller

Herta Müller, the Nobel Prize laureate in literature 2009.

She was among the authors mentioned as one of many possible candidates.

I haven't read her but I have to do so now of course. Why of course you ask?

Well of no particular reason more than the lust for reading.

A couple of years ago - it started in 1997 - a friend and I decided to read ALL the literature written by ALL the Nobel Prize laureates, from 1901 and forwards.

This is of course an impossible project but we found it rather stimulating anyway.

We started with Dario Fo where we read all that had been published in Sweden at the time and in fact it was not so much as one might have thought. It caused a lot of laugh anyway, reading the sometime absurd stories of Fo!

Then we continued with José Saramago and there, we found a lot more to read and I did very much enjoy Saramago as a writer. He sometimes writes in 'mysterious ways' and it engage the brain.

The fourth author was one we knew quite well, namely Günter Grass. Not only Die Blechtrommel, a book I also saw transposed into a film by Volker Schlöndorff in 1979, a film I appreciated a lot and I have seen it later too.

Next author to be read was Gao Xingjian and at the time only three of his books had been translated into Swedish; Soul Mountain, One Man's Bible and Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather : Stories. My Chinese is unfortunately restricted to 'How do you do' and 'Goodbye'!

We then continued forwardly but also read some of the older laureates.

We had - both of us - read quite a number of authors rewarded the Nobel Prize in literature but Gao was a new experience for me, as well as Kertész, Coetzee, Jelinek, Pamuk and Le Clézio.

The same goes for Herta Müller.

Now my wife and I have decided to start reading the Nobel Prize laureate but this time in French. 

My mother-in-law is in possession of one book by each and every laureate from 1901 til 1982 (if I remember correctly). We started earlier this summer by reading Sully Prudhomme and Journal Intime.

This time my wife proposed to read the books, not chronologically but chosen by style and she suggested we read the poetical writers:

Frédéric Mistral, Giosué Carducci, Erik-Axel Karlfeldt, Gabriela Mistral, Salvatore Quasimodo, Saint-John Perse and Nelly Sachs to begin with.

We will read everyday until the 10th of December.

(Photo of Herta Müller copied from: https://www.larevuedesressources.org/herta-muller-prix-nobel-de-litterature-2009,1349.html)