- Published: 07/11/2013
- ISBN: 9781846274756
- 161x20mm
- 208 pages
Cristina and Her Double
Herta Müller
Translated by Geoffrey Mulligan
Simon Schama, in defence of the essay in the age of Twitter, writes: ‘The self-propulsion of a ranging intelligence is the dynamo that drives a powerful essay; the headlong gallop of thought to a destination the reader can’t predict and which may not have occurred to the writer when he began.’ That power, that propulsion, that surprise is evident in every one of this selection of the very finest of the essays produced over the past 20 years by the Romanian-German Nobel Laureate Herta Müller. She interrogates Communist society – especially in its bizarre Romanian Ceausescu variation – and matters of complicity, secrecy, betrayal, guilt, responsibility, resistance and the power of literature. Her writing is bewitching and convincing; her approach is unswerving, unsparing and undeluded. Her reader is grateful.
These are among the most powerful demonstrations of the pen’s might exceeding the sword’s to be produced in the last forty years in Europe.
£18.99
Herta Müller has eyes like spotlights that drive out the darkness night after night
Verena Auffermann
I am always amazed by how much power and nobility can fit into such a tiny and fragile frame
Mircea Cartarescu
Müller is a writer who releases great emotional power through a highly sophisticated, image-studded, and often expressionist prose
New York Review of Books
From the Same Author
Herta Müller on Granta.com
Essays & Memoir | The Online Edition
Words in the Head and Words in the Sentence
Herta Müller
‘During an interrogation speech glows hot in the mouth, and what is spoken freezes.’
Herta Müller on language. Translated from the German by Philip Boehm.
Fiction | Granta 125
Always the Same Snow and Always the Same Uncle
Herta Müller
‘Who knows: what I write I must eat, what I don’t write – eats me.’
Fiction | Granta 134
The Way of the Apple Worm
Herta Müller
‘The mother of the needle is the place that bleeds.’