The Land of Green Plums in Around the World

Oct 11, 2009 Julia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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

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Mar 14, 2016 Friederike Knabe rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: german-lit

Four students, Edward, Georg, Kurt and "I", the narrator, develop a close friendship in the aftermath of the alleged suicide of Lola. She had shared a room at the student dorm with the narrator and four other girls. Lola came from the south of the country and was in many ways different from the majority of students. "I", the other outsider among the girls, was entrusted with Lola's diary, and tried to hide it in her suitcase. However, there were no safe places for secrets anymore; suspicion and Four students, Edward, Georg, Kurt and "I", the narrator, develop a close friendship in the aftermath of the alleged suicide of Lola. She had shared a room at the student dorm with the narrator and four other girls. Lola came from the south of the country and was in many ways different from the majority of students. "I", the other outsider among the girls, was entrusted with Lola's diary, and tried to hide it in her suitcase. However, there were no safe places for secrets anymore; suspicion and intrigue was palpable. The friendship of the four young people was in part born out their lives' otherness: they were members of Banat-Svabian (German) minority in Romania; their fathers had been SS officers, their mothers were eking out a living as seamstresses in different small communities away from the university town. They feel connected through their language and different upbringing. Speaking through the narrator, Herta Müller weaves an extraordinarily rich and haunting portrait of daily life under the totalitarian Ceausescu regime of the 1980s. Exemplifying the novel's central theme - to bear witness to the open and hidden horrors - the author depicts the individual experiences of the four central characters and their interactions as they are increasingly caught in the net of the security police and its ever observant helpers. After leaving town, being sent to different work places, they invent a special undercover language or terminology to communicate by letter...

"HERZTIER" (1993) -published in 1996 under the English title "The Land of Green Plums" - transcends the usual definition of a 'novel': it has been called a "prose poem" by some commentators. For me, having read it in its German original, a definition as 'poem' does not really capture the book's essence, despite its often poetic language. I don't know of any other text quite like it. Applying a deliberately simple structure: short paragraphs, short sentences, extensive indirect dialog, often introduced by 'he said', she 'said', Müller's language is nevertheless highly complex. Even without any interactive dialog, the narrative is vivid and, once the reader is used to Müller's approach, it flows despite there being no coherent plot and the reader has to keep abreast through many jumps in timelines and scenarios. Some sections are even funny in their own somewhat macabre way, such as Captain Pjele and his dog with the same name. The reader senses different layers to the text - the straightforward surface structure of the narrator's reminiscences is in fact hiding a extraordinarily refined and evocative range of images and metaphors. One feels tempted to go back and reread sections. Fast readers be warned: this is a book that requires slow reading, with pauses for reflection. At times Müller uses her own or local terminology. The German title, Herztier, for example, does not exist as a term, it is a composite of 'heart' and 'animal'. The author gives subtle hints as to its significance: everybody has one, sometimes it disappears as quickly as a mouse, other times one can hold on to somebody else's ... The 'green plums' in the English title also have symbolic meaning - they stand in part of the strong yearning for truth and at the same time the brutality of its suppression.

Herta Müller's "Land of Green Plums" won the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the richest award of its kind that also awarded the translator, Michael Hofmann. The author was born in Romania into the German language minority. After years of publication ban, she was able to emigrate to Germany in 1987. Her 2009 Literature Nobel Prize recognizes her unique literary qualities and, hopefully expands the international readership for her work. HERZTIER was my first experience with the author and it will definitively not be the last. Herta Müller's writing have an eerie attraction, a deceptive lightness of language, rich development of characters and social conditions; profound evocation of a difficult period in recent European history that is difficult to leave behind after the book is closed. While Romania represented the central context in the book, much could have applied to other countries behind the "Iron Curtain". A rare talent to bring these very divers elements together in a novel. ...more

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Sep 16, 2018 Kati Stevens added it · review of another edition

A novel for the historically and poetically inclined, but only both together, I think.

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Jan 11, 2012 Tanya rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: around-the-world-2012

Romania

Set in Romania during Ceausescu's rule. It tells the story of a group of young university graduates coping in an atmosphere of fear and paranoia.

This was hard going. The writing sytle is unusual and you really need to concentrate on every word and it was quite easy to miss something important.
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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

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