The Land of Green Plums [Paperback]

this book is about some youngsters' dream of life and their disappointment. especially about friendship, the book gives us a harsh reality of what it is to grow up. those friends who experienced tragic death of their common friend, find it almost impossible to be free from the frustration after all. they are not only haunted by the intruding force of authority but also by their own past. the stories of their families are just too forceful.
also, i think the narrative style which is tossed by thoses quotes (he said, she said, ... said, etc.) not to mention, through those letters written by various characters, is fantastic. i can imagine, in original german language, it would be a lot better to be read, with the reportage-like nuance of verb endings of indirect quotation.
very eccentric and exciting novel!

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. [Friederike Knabe]

Be prepared to be surprised. You probably havent read anything like this before. It is very interestingly written, more like a poetry. But its not a book for everyone, its not an easy reading, where you can send your mind somewhere else. You have to be there completely. All your senses, emotions etc. This is like The Little Prince - but for adults. Herta Muller is telling us a story about living under dictatorship, halfman, halfanimal being, trying to forget about all the hopes and desires we share as humans forming a society. If you reach for the beauty, difference or something simple as love, you are condemned. Not all of us have experienced communism in this way (I am a bit too young), but this is a personal declaration about violation of human rights, being stabbed in the back, betrayed, left alone, dissapointed. Sadly, many of the things, described in this book, are true events. The book fokuses on the group of friends, that have met each other attending university. They soon reach and cross the boundaries of allowed thinking... But dont just give up if you think this is just too sad to read! It offers you a great thinking material you shouldnt avoid! It opens your horizons, sharpens your emotions. Even if you are a rock - do prepare a handkerchief for a tear or two. A book you can give to someone special in your life as a symbol of your friendship.