Romanian Novelist Wins IMPAC Award

Romanian writer Herta Muller won the world’s richest prize for a work of fiction, “The Land of Green Plums,” a novel remembering friends killed under the Stalinist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. “I am overwhelmed because I never expected to win,” said Muller, who was born into Romania’s German-speaking minority in 1953 but now lives in Germany. The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner was chosen from 88 titles published in 1996. Muller takes home about $105,000; her translator, poet Michael Hofmann, about $35,000.