Product Description

Set in Romania at the height of Ceausescu's reign of terror, "The Land of Green Plums" tells the story of a group of young students, each of whom has left the impoverished provinces in search of better prospects in the city. It is a profound illustration of a totalitarian state which comes to inhabit every aspect of life; to the extent that everyone, event the strongest, must either bend to the oppressors, or resist them and perish.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2315 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-03
• Original language: German
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Like the narrator of her novel The Land of Green Plums, Herta Muller grew up a German minority in Ceausescu's Romania, which she eventually left to settle in Germany. Her own experience lends credibility to the voice of her young narrator, who inhabits a deprived police state in which minorities such as the ethnic Germans suffer persecution beyond the quotidian oppressions of Ceausescu's regime. The title refers to the young woman's observations of the swaggering policemen who wolf down plums from the city trees, even while they're still green; the act serves as a symbol of greed, arbitrary power and stupidity. Although an element of the story is survival, achieved by clinging to the German culture and language, the novel also confronts the older characters' sympathy with the Nazis. Nevertheless, Muller's fictional heroine finds salvation, as she herself did, in modern Germany. --Alex Freeman

About the Author
Born in Romania in 1953, Herta Muller lost her job as a teacher and suffered repeated threats after refusing to cooperate with Ceausescu's Secret Police. She succeeded in emigrating in 1987 and now lives in Berlin. A renowned novelist, poet and essayist, Muller won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant. A heart-breaking and thought-provoking novel.
Herta Muller uses delicate imagaery (factory workers making 'tin sheep and wooden melons') to convey the quiet desperation lurking behind the fake, fixed smiles of ordinary citizens in the police state of communist Romania. The narrator leaves her poor country village to go to the city, where she hopes to find some meaning in her life. Instead she finds that no matter how hard she tries, she cannot stop the fear and despair that comes to infiltrate her every waking moment ('In this county, we had to walk, eat, sleep and love in fear'). Muller wonderfully evokes the harsh reality of the totalitarian state were, in having their freedom and ability to make their own choices taken away from them, human beings are reduced to zombies. A bleak and heart-rending story, but one which nonetheless has to be told.

Youthfull Hope vs Corrupt Cyncism
Tale of life in Communist Romania, of the rural young in a urban world. A touching tale of youths who wish to reject the system under which they live and enjoy the freedoms of those who live outside the barbed-wire boundaries. Muller shows how the cyncism of dictatorships eroded hope and how fear and terror can disrupt all. A highly reccommended read.Y

Beautiful... Astonishing
This novel is one of the most powerful ones I have ever read. The author has a wonderful way of making us feel for the characters, and it is written in such a compassionate and moving way. This is right up there on my list of great books along with Byatt's Possession and another book that reminded me of this one: The God of Small Things.