Book Review: The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller

Title: The Land of Green Plums
Author: Herta Müller
Publisher: Metropolitan Books; First Edition edition
Publication Date: November 15, 1996
Hardcover: 256 pages
ISBN: 978-0805042955
Genre: Fiction

From the Publisher:

Set in Romania at the height of Ceauescu’s reign of terror,The Land of Green Plums tells the story of a group of young people who leave the impoverished province for the city in search of better prospects and camaraderie. But their hopes are ravaged, because the city, no less than the countryside, bears everywhere the mark of the dictatorship’s corrosive touch. All the narrator’s friends—teachers and students of vaguely dissident allegiance—betray her, do away with themselves, or both. As they do so, we see the way the totalitarian state comes to inhabit every human realm and how everyone, even the strongest, must either bend to the oppressors or resist them and thereby perish.
Herta Müller, herself a survivor of Ceausescu’s police state, speaks from intimate experience. Scene by scene, in language at once harsh and poetic, she constructs a devastating picture of a society and a generation ruined by fear. In simple images of hieroglyphic power—policeman filling their pockets and mouths with green plums; girls sleeping with abattoir workers for bags of offal; a docile proletariat making things no one wants—”tin sheep and wooden watermelons”—Müller anatomizes a country and its citizens and the corruption that has rotted the core of both.

My Review:

Rich, symbolic and full of lyrical prose, The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller takes the reader to Romania and through the oppression suffered by the people under Ceausescu’s totalitarian regime.  The narrator does not tell the story in a linear pattern, rather in bits and pieces that become interwoven to bring forth a masterful tapestry, rich, deep, and dark.  The reader learns about Lola and the days leading up to her apparent suicide, which is what brings the narrator together with Edgar, Georg, and Kurt.  The four speak of freedom and hope without ever uttering the words.  The narrator refers to the proletariats as sheep and wooden melons and speaks of barbers, graveyards and ailing mothers, all seemingly random topics, yet deeply symbolic of a life that offers little happiness or hope.   Müller has once again created an intensely intellectual novel, filled with the bleakness that comes from living under such a brutal regime, yet Müller offers up blooms of hope.  The Land of Green Plums is a short novel, yet deeply intense, symbolic and intellectual, commanding the reader’s full attention.  While the subject matter of those living in oppression is neither light nor cheerful, I strongly recommend this novel to anyone looking for a deeply intellectual read.

About the Author:

Born in Romania in 1953, Herta Müller 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. The recipient of the European Literature Prize, she won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for The Land of Green Plums.

I received a complimentary copy of The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller from Henry Holt and Company Publishers to review. Receiving a copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.