GERMAN WOMAN WINS NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

Yesterday Herta Müller was just another struggling scribe, like us, hoping that perhaps only a few would see and enjoy her work. That would be enough. It usually is. The brief recognition can easily make up for the years and hours upon hours of research and writing and editing and rewriting.

Today she is a different kind of author. The little-known Romanian-born German novelist and poet will soon have her work, "The Passport", translated into hundreds of languages as she claims the Nobel Prize for Literature. (Trivia: Müller is the 12th woman to receive the Nobel prize since it was established in 1901.)

Official description of "The Passport":

A Romanian village is caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu's dictatorship and the temptations of the West in this novel, which describes in detail the dreams and superstitions, conflicts and oppression of a forgotten region, the Banat in the Danube Plain.

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• Herta Mueller wins Nobel literature prize (msnbc.msn.com)