The Village on the Edge of the World. Writing and Surviving Ceaușescu's Romania: Work by Nobel laureate Herta Müller released in English translation

Herta Müller's The Village on the Edge of the World, a reflection on life behind the Iron Curtain, is due for release by Pegasus Books this May.

The book, translated into English by Kate McNaughton, presents "a brilliant, discomfiting reflection on literary life defined by the brutality of Ceaușescu's Romania."

"From her childhood in a Romanian village 'as small as a thimble on the edge of the world' to life in exile in Germany, Herta Müller's story unspools against the tumultuous history of Romania in the latter half of the twentieth century. Here, the Nobel Prize laureate reflects on cultural history, memory, and trauma, as well as what it was like to live and write under Ceaușescu's regime," a presentation from the publisher reads.

Herta Müller was born on August 17, 1953, in Nițchidorf, in Romania's Banat region. In 1987, she emigrated to Germany and has lived in Berlin ever since. She is the author of The Land of Green Plums, The Appointment, The Hunger Angel, and The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, among other works. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009.

Kate McNaughton is a documentary filmmaker, author, and translator, working from the French, German, and Italian. Her debut novel, How I Lose You, was published in 2018.

(Illustration: Pegasus Books)