My Homeland was an Appleseed

Herta Müller has fascinated readers the world over. Here, for the first time, she talks in detail about what inspired her to write and what defines her life as an author: a life history in literature.
»To have gone from a childhood spent herding cows in a valley to this city hall in Stockholm— what a bizarre trajectory. It feels as though I’m watching myself from the outside— something that happens a lot!«
These were the opening words of Herta Müller’s Nobel Prize banquet speech—an unforgettable summary of her origins, career and the astonishing course of her life. In this book, Herta Müller details her life’s journey in a long conversation with Angelika Klammer: she describes her childhood in a Romanian village, growing up and the dawning of political awareness. She talks of her early encounters with literature, her conflicts with the communist dictatorship and how she came to be a writer. The account of her arrival in a new country opens up an unusual perspective on Germany in the 1980s and 90s and on contemporary society.