Two languages-German and Romanian-inform the novels, essays, and collage poetry of Nobel laureate Herta Muller. Describing her writing as autofictional, Muller depicts the effects of violence, cruelty, and terror on her characters based on her own experiences in Communist Romania under the repressive Nicolae Ceausescu regime.

Herta Muller: Politics and Aesthetics explores Muller’s writings from different literary, cultural, and historical perspectives. Part 1 features Muller’s Nobel lecture, five new collage poems, and an interview with Ernest Wichner, a German-Romanian author who has traveled with her and sheds light on her writing. Parts 2 and 3, featuring essays by scholars from across Europe and the United States, address the political and poetical aspects of Muller’s texts. Contributors discuss life under the Romanian Communist dictatorship while also stressing key elements of Muller’s poetics, which promises both self-conscious formal experimentation and political intervention.

One of the first books in English to thoroughly examine Muller’s writing, this volume addresses audiences with an interest in dissident, exile, migration, experimental, and transnational literature.