Romania
The Land of
Green Plums
Herta Muller
Phew! You will need your wits
about you for this one. From the 2009 Nobel Prize winner, Herta Muller, we are
taken to the time of
Nicolae
Ceausescu, and the dictatorship that formed the early part of her life.
As I was being
raised in the 1960’s, I was given the impression that everywhere ‘East’ was
grey, overcast, gloomy and dull. Muller’s writing certainly gave credence to
this perception. Everybody was downtrodden, living in fear and without hope.
Although this is set two decades later, the impression remains unchanged.
The story revolves
around a group of four students, from the provinces, who further their
education within a university setting in the city. What begins as an omnipotent
narrative soon becomes a diary type memory of events from one on these young
people. As each journey unfolds, intertwined with each other, the despair for
the future of each begins to seep off the page and into the psyche of the
reader. We are told of the intervention
of the state in all that they did, from the secret policeman, who offered
advice, veiling threats; constantly telling all the students that they are
lucky to have him for their protection, to the dog at his heel, that had the
same name, but tore the heels and trouser legs as soon as his master gave the
order. As the students left for their predetermined jobs, decided by the state
the friends decide that when they write to each other, they would place a
single hair in the envelope to determine whether the post had been intercepted –
it generally was, with the state keeping a firm grip on all that was said,
thought and written. The story goes on to conclude the tale of each
protagonist, and we, as readers, are told about, among other things, the
process of emigration and the way the country operated under the dictatorship.
The writing itself
is quite riveting; you can find yourself turning pages almost without realising.
But there are no particular points where the story explodes, rather the
opposite; it implodes within the character’s lives often. However, Muller does
tend to wander off the direct line of prose, and brings in occasional allegories,
reverting to hypothetical scenes to explain the present, but not for long,
there is really little need to digress.
It is a difficult
book to read, as I’m sure it was to write, but that doesn’t make it less of a
story. The subject matter is tough the language regarding the subject is tough
and the prose itself is difficult to stay with. This is not bedtime reading as
I promise you will not keep up, thus failing to grasp its importance. And I do think it important that work like
this is out there. How can we learn the mistakes without reading, digesting and
responding to this historical warning, being shouted long and hard from the
rooftops.
Published by Granta Books, London
ISBN 9781862072602
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