Literature · Art · Scholarship · Living
Born: 17 August 1953 · Age: 73
Herta Müller is 73 years old as of October 2026. She was born on 17 August 1953.
Romanian-born German novelist of The Land of Green Plums whose work about life under Ceaușescu won the Nobel Prize
Did you know?After refusing to collaborate with the secret police under the communist regime, she was fired from her job as a translator.
Herta Müller writes about life under dictatorship. She grew up in Romania's German-speaking minority, in a village in the Banat. Her mother had been deported to a Soviet labour camp after the war. When she refused to inform for the Securitate secret police, she lost her job and was harassed for years. She moved to Germany in 1987. Her novel The Hunger Angel draws on survivors' memories of the camps. She won the Nobel Prize in 2009.
Herta Müller (German:; born 17 August 1953) is a Romanian-German novelist, poet, essayist and recipient of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born in Nițchidorf, Timiș County in Romania; her native languages are German and Romanian.
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Profile
Romanian-German writer, born 1953
Herta Müller was born in Nițchidorf, Romania, on 17 August 1953.
She refused to cooperate with the Securitate.
She moved to Germany in 1987.
She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2009.
Career highlights
Did you know?Her mother was deported to a Soviet labour camp.
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Last reviewed: October 2026