2009 Nobel Prize in Literature

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Herta Müller. The prize was announced by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on 8 October 2009.

The citation

The citation reads: "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed".

The laureate

Herta Müller was born in 1953 in Nitzkydorf, Banat, Romania.

Why it matters

The German writer grew up in Romania's German-speaking minority and was persecuted by the Ceaușescu regime. Her work depicts life under dictatorship.

The prize

The prize is worth 10 million Swedish kronor. It will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December, the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite whose will founded the prizes in 1895.