1998年--青梅之乡 德语

shiyi18

1998 – The Land of Green Plums
Author: Herta Müller
Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann
Winner of the 1998 Award
The Judges’ Citation
The novel brilliantly evokes a world of cruelty and oppression. Set in Communist Romania under the Ceaucescu dictatorship, The Land of Green Plums portrays the lives of a group of dissident students and teachers whose integrity is continuously assailed and sometimes betrayed. Herta Müller’s stark and vivid prose explores a terror-stricken society of mendacity and political slander. The “green plums” of the title stand in part for truth and its brutal suppression in a world of interrogators and informers, where speaking out can become a matter of life and death.

The author’s style, achieves a spartan eloquence, and the novel’s individual charaters are powerfully drawn.

This elegantly understated book is at once bleak and beautiful, humorous and heartbreaking. The judges congratulate Herta Müller for her compelling literary achievement in The Land of Green Plums.

About the Book
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.

About the Author
Herta Müller is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, as well as the 1998 International Dublin Literary Award and the European Literature Prize. She is the author of, among other books, The Hunger Angel and The Land of Green Plums. Born in Romania in 1953, 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.

1998 Judging Panel
The 1998 Judging Panel includes Greg Gatenby, Margo Glantz, Paul Muldoon, Marta Tikkanen, Al Young and non-voting Chair, Allen Weinstein

1998 Shortlist  
1998 Longlist




1998年--青梅之乡
作者：Herta Müller 赫塔-穆勒
德文译本：迈克尔-霍夫曼
1998年获奖者
评委的评语
这部小说出色地唤起了一个残酷和压迫的世界。青梅之乡》以齐奥塞斯库独裁统治下的共产主义罗马尼亚为背景，描写了一群持不同政见的学生和教师的生活，他们的人格不断受到攻击，有时甚至被出卖。赫塔-穆勒以鲜明生动的散文，探讨了一个充满欺诈和政治诽谤的恐怖社会。标题中的 "绿李子 "部分地代表了真相，以及在一个由审讯者和告密者组成的世界中对真相的残酷压制，在这个世界中，说出真相可能成为生死攸关的问题。

作者的风格达到了一种简约的雄辩，小说中的各个人物都被有力地描绘出来。

这本优雅低调的书既荒凉又美丽，既幽默又令人心碎。评委们对赫塔-穆勒在《青梅之乡》中取得的令人瞩目的文学成就表示祝贺。

关于此书
青梅之乡》以塞厄斯库恐怖统治时期的罗马尼亚为背景，讲述了一群年轻人离开贫困的省份前往城市寻找更好的前景和友情的故事。但他们的希望遭到了破坏，因为城市和农村一样，到处都有独裁政权腐蚀的痕迹。叙述者的所有朋友--教师和学生，他们对她隐约抱有异见--都背叛了她，或自己离开了她，或两者都是。在他们这样做的过程中，我们看到了极权主义国家是如何占据人类的每一个领域的，以及每个人，即使是最强壮的人，都必须向压迫者屈服，或者反抗他们，从而灭亡。

赫塔-穆勒自己也是齐奥塞斯库警察国家的幸存者，她说的是亲身经历。她用既严厉又富有诗意的语言，一幕一幕地描绘了一个被恐惧毁掉的社会和一代人的惨状。在简单的象形文字权力图像中，警察在口袋里和嘴里塞满了绿李子；女孩为了一袋内脏与屠宰场工人睡觉；温顺的无产阶级制造无人问津的东西--"铁皮羊和木头西瓜"--穆勒解剖了一个国家和它的公民以及腐烂了两者核心的腐败。

关于作者
赫塔-穆勒是2009年诺贝尔文学奖得主，也是1998年国际都柏林文学奖和欧洲文学奖得主。她是《饥饿天使》和《青梅之乡》等书的作者。穆勒1953年出生于罗马尼亚，因拒绝与齐奥塞斯库的秘密警察合作，失去了教师的工作，并多次受到威胁。她于1987年成功移民，现居住在柏林。

1998年评审小组
1998年的评审小组包括格雷格-盖腾比、马戈-格兰茨、保罗-马尔敦、玛塔-蒂卡宁、阿尔-杨和无投票权的主席艾伦-温斯坦。

1998年入围名单  
1998年长名单