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
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Set in Romania at the height of Ceausescu's reign of terror, this novel 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.