A Unique Exile Scenario:
Select Stories in Nadirs by Herta Müller
Dr. Preethamol M. K.
ABSTRACT
Herta Muller, the acclaimed German writer of
Romanian origin and recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in
2009 has in her oeuvre, works that carries the indelible mark of
oppression and resistance. Her narrative trajectory reveals the
experiences of an intellectual condemned to de facto exile before
experiencing de jure exile under the Communist dictatorship of
Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania. This unique exile scenario has served
her as a preamble to delineating discussions on exile, while
remaining in spatial inner exile. Whether you are in exile
physically or experiencing exile psychologically, the emotional
roller coaster you are subjected to, remain the same, with
alienation, displacement, dislocation and loss of homeland haunting
you. Muller’s prose speaks for her fractured inner self in exile
where authoritarianism has made her life a lived reality in exile.
Her writing transfers the trauma of dictatorship and the complex
identity of someone caught between nations, languages and histories.
The article titled A Unique Exile Scenario: Select Stories in Nadirs
by Herta Muller proposes to do a study on select short stories from
Nadirs, the autobiographical memoir on life under dictatorship that
exemplifies how inner exile reveals traumatising times of violence,
resistance, dispossession, surveillance and estrangement.
Key Words: authoritarian- trauma-exile -resistance -oppression.
