Herta Müller

She was born into a Banat Swabian family in western Romania in 1953 and studied German and Romance Philology at the University of Timisoara (Romania). She was obliged to leave the country because of her political dissidence and has been living in Berlin since 1987. Her work describes life in Romania under the Ceausescu dictatorship and much of it is also concerned with the fate of German minority populations in Central European countries who often had to pay twofold for the crimes of National Socialism. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Notable among those published in Catalan and Spanish are L’home és un gran faisà en el món (Bromera, 2009 – The Passport), La bèstia del cor (Bromera, 2009 – The Land of Green Plums ), En terres baixes (Bromera, 2010 – In Lowlands), Hoy hubiera preferido no encontrarme a mí misma (Siruela, 2010 – The Appointment), Tot el que tinc ho duc al damunt (Bromera, 2010 – The Hunger Angel) and the collection of essays El rey se inclina y mata (“The King Bows and Kills”, Siruela, 2011).