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This week, author Herta Müller was named winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Müller, 56, is part of Romania's German minority, and has spent much of her career writing about her time living in Romania under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu.

The Nobel Committee praised Müller's commitment to depicting the hardships in her homeland, writing that, "with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, [Müller] depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." She will receive $1.4 million as part of the prize.

After her first two books were published, the government restricted Müller from publishing her work in Romania. She relocated to Germany in 1987 in order to continue writing and publishing.

Müller has written 19 books, including 1998's The Land of Green Plums, for which Müller won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Only four of her books are available in English, though there is speculation that more of the new Laureate's work may be translated and made available in the U.S.

Image: Amrei-Marie. Original uploader was Amrei-Marie at de.wikipedia.
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