Summary of The Land of Green Plums
In “The Land of Green Plums”, Lola, a student in Timișoara, is found dead in her student accommodation. Following her death, Lola’s diary becomes a refuge for the narrator and her friends, all young people from the German-Romanian minority known as ‘Banat Swabians’. They are being watched by the Securitate, the secret police in Ceaușescu’s Communist Romania, and their lives remain under threat even after some of them manage to escape to Germany.
Reasons to read The Land of Green Plums
“The Land of Green Plums” is a dark novel that captures the constant fear and oppression experienced by ordinary Romanians under Ceaușescu’s totalitarian regime. The novel is partly biographical. Herta Müller, who grew up as a member of the German minority in Communist Romania, later fled to Germany. Müller won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009. Other notable works of hers include “The Appointment”, “The Hunger Angel”, and “The Passport”, all set in Romania. The English translation of “The Land of Green Plums” won the International Dublin Literary Award in 1998.
Setting: Timișoara (Romania)
Original title: Herztier
Year of publication: 1994
Nr of pages: 272
