Choice of Mueller for Nobel thrills Germany book industry

Oct 8, 2009, 13:00 GMT

   Berlin - The choice of Herta Mueller, 56, for this year's Nobel Prize for Literature thrilled Germany's book publishing industry Thursday, with predictions that her latest book will now top the best-seller charts.

'Fantastic,' said Christina Knecht, a spokeswoman for the Munich publishing house Carl Hanser which publishes her work.

   The latest book, entitled Atemschaukel in German, with the English working title 'Everything I Own I Carry With Me,' describes the appalling hunger and deprivation of Soviet gulags from the point of view of a 17-year-old ethnic German boy from Romania.

It is one of six finalists the German Book Award for this year's best novel in German, with the winner to be announced on Monday.

Gottfried Honnefelder, chairman of the German publishers and bookseller federation Boersenverein, played down reminders that some German critics have been scathing about Mueller's work.

'We're hugely delighted,' he said. 'It may seem strange to say it, but this is exactly what should have happened. She is one of the best writers that we have in this country. Powerful, but at the same time delicate.'

Honnefelder rejected the suggestion that any middle-aged writer may produce some flops in the future, making it safer to award the Nobel to an author in the twilight of a career.

'When the Nobel goes to quite a young woman who is still writing, that is really meaningful,' he said, adding that the award would also have a political impact as an endorsement of freedom.

Michael Krueger, chief of Carl Hanser, described Mueller as a conducting 'a highly literary process of mourning' for the victims of communism.

'Even 20 years after the end of the East-West conflict, she has the role of keeping alive memories of the inhumanity of communism,' he said. That made her a fine example of 'European committed literature' that 'brings history into the present.'