From the Bookshelf of Read a book from each country…

Herztier

Herta Müller

Why we're reading this: Nobel-winning author Herta Müller depicts the reality of living in communist Romania in a bleak, metaphor…more
[close] Nobel-winning author Herta Müller depicts the reality of living in communist Romania in a bleak, metaphory language. Important topic, interesting author.

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Oct 11, 2009 Julia rated it it was amazing

Shelves: german-lit, political-lit, romania

When i started to read, i thought: "Oh no, stream-of-conscious-like, unconnected episodes in a weird language....", but as i progressed i slowly started to appreciate Müller's unusual language. The metaphors are strange, but are very expressive.They make you feel the opressive atmosphere in a totalitarian regime, one starts to feel persecuted by "harmless men with dogs" walking behind you, one can relate perfectly well to how the characters grow more and more hopeless and depressed despite of th ...more

37 likes · Like · see review

Oct 08, 2009 Alta added it · review of another edition

The Land of Green Plums, first published in English in 1996 by Metropolitan Books, and reissued in 1998 by Northwestern, is one of the greatest books on dictatorship I have ever read. It is also one of the most authentic books. What do I mean by that? This book being inspired by the author’s personal trauma, it would have been easy for it to fall into the confessions-of-a-victim mood that characterizes a certain kind of literature today. But Herta Müller’s style couldn’t be more different. Her p The Land of Green Plums, first published in English in 1996 by Metropolitan Books, and reissued in 1998 by Northwestern, is one of the greatest books on dictatorship I have ever read. It is also one of the most authentic books. What do I mean by that? This book being inspired by the author’s personal trauma, it would have been easy for it to fall into the confessions-of-a-victim mood that characterizes a certain kind of literature today. But Herta Müller’s style couldn’t be more different. Her personal experience comes through not by way of a revelation of a specific event, but from the intense feeling of alienation emanating from every single line. It is as if the book had been written by someone whose heart was ripped out of her chest, pounded with a hammer, and then put back in a way that barely holds the body together. Every single sentence rings true. There is neither self-pity nor “poeticizing” of the experience, though the book, translated by Michael Hoffman, is written in a style that reads almost like poetry. It is written in fragments, which are chronological for the most part, though in some cases time suddenly goes forward or backward. Something specific to Müller’s style, which may make her harder to read, is that she doesn’t explain things; she never “analyzes,” she puts down scenes and impressions, but these are always meaningful, never simply descriptive. To give one example among many others: when the narrator is a guest in a friend’s house, the friend’s grandmother immediately places a bowl of food before her without asking her anything or even being introduced: “Her grandmother didn’t need my name: she saw a mouth in a face, so she gave me soup.” In this simple scene we have the essence of a grandmother as a woman who feeds any mouth she happens to see. The meaning comes from the overall sensorial and visual experience—though, paradoxically, because of the intense feeling of alienation, the narrator’s sensorial experience often seems to be that of a living corpse.

No one is “good” in this novel (and anyone who ever lived under a dictatorship knows that no one can be good in hell; that’s why uplifting Hollywood films à la Spielberg about historical tragedies are so inadequate). Everyone, including the victims, wants to hurt the others. Herta Müller’s world represents one of the most degraded humanities ever depicted by a writer: the slaughterhouse workers drink blood regularly, the town’s demented dwarf woman is repeatedly raped without anyone paying any attention, the young woman who is eventually killed by the secret police goes to the park where she sleeps with a different man every night, the narrator’s best friend (whose father works for the secret police) accepts the secret police’s offer to visit her friend in West Germany and to steal her apartment key.

The Land of Green Plums is an extraordinary novel written by a writer who was awarded the highest literary honor, yet whose work is still overlooked and undervalued.
...more

8 likes · Like · see review

Dec 20, 2009 Michael Scott rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: thought, fiction, dystopia, memoir, politics, award-meaningful

The Land of Green Plums is a narrative about life behind the Iron Curtain. As such, the reader finds in it the trivial (the scarcity of food and clothes, the generalized lack of education, etc), the once-hidden-but-now-known (the internal police, the informers, the political jokes, the abortions, the real and the forced suicides, the treatment of the system's disidents, the interface between the village and the city -- the source of the English title), and, most importantly, the first-hand accou ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Apr 30, 2013 Cheryl rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: nobel-prize

This book, sadly, did not meet my expectations. When I saw that it was based heavily upon the author's experience under Ceausescu's Reign of Terror in Romania following WWII, I was excited for the insights I expected as the author described the situation in Romania at that time. She she definitely portrayed the terror of the police state, I was expecting more of a narrative. Instead, Muller writes in a very lyrical prose, stream-of-conscious style. Uggg, for me. With little connection to charact ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Sep 18, 2012 Arden rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-from-every-country

It took me two attempts to finish this book and the only reason I read it was because I was curious about reading a book set in Romania and it received so much acclaim. I will have to admit that the writing really did very successfully convey an incredible sense of paranoia and oppression, but the plot and the characters left a lot to be desired.

1 like · Like · see review

Jan 05, 2010 Daniela rated it did not like it · review of another edition

hallucinations of a sick mind about the nightmarish years of the communist regime in Romania! how on earth did Muller get the Nobel?

1 like · Like · see review

Mar 24, 2012 Tracy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: for-fun

It took me a bit to get into this work, but completely worth it once I did. Get yourself through the first 30-40 pages and it grows on you.

Like · see review

Oct 10, 2012 Jodi rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I just couldn't get into this book - it felt so disjointed and jumped all around. ...more

Like · see review

Oct 09, 2009 Erma Odrach rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The story is set in Romania during Ceausescu's totalitarian regime. The plot is quite simple but at the same time very painful. The lyrical prose is what drew me in. ...more

1 like · Like · see review