The Village on the Edge of the World - Writing and Surviving Ceausescu's Romania

From her childhood in Romania, in a village 'as small as a thimble on the edge of the world', through to life in exile in Germany, Herta Müller's story unspools against the tumultuous history of Romania in the latter half of the twentieth century. Here, the Nobel Prize laureate reflects on cultural history, memory and trauma, and on what it was to live and write during Ceausescu's regime: on the friendships that buckled under the weight of fear and paranoia; on the experience of being surveilled and interrogated; and on the unique blend of fear and tedium borne through life under totalitarianism.

The Village on the Edge of the World is a book that chronicles the minutiae of life under both fascism and the Soviet Union, while charting the existential questions posed by these regimes of the twentieth century - and how they remain with us in the twenty-first.

About the author

Herta Müller was born on 17 August 1953 in Banat, Romania. In 1987, she emigrated to Germany and has lived in Berlin ever since. She is the author of The Land of Green Plums, The Appointment, The Hunger Angel and The Fox Was Ever the Hunter, among other works. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009.

Kate McNaughton is a documentary film maker, author and translator, working from the French, German and Italian. Her debut novel, How I Lose You, was published in 2018.

Product details

• Authors: Herta Müller
• Assisted by: Kate McNaughton (Translation)
• Publisher: Granta Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 07.05.2026
• EAN: 9781783788170
• ISBN: 978-1-78378-817-0
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures, Eastern Europe, European History, Memoirs, HISTORY / Europe / Eastern, Autobiography: writers, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs