The Romanian born German writer Herta Muller won the 2009 Nobel Prize for literature. Writer Herta Mueller was born on August 17, 1953, at Nitchidorf, in Banat and it is there too that she made her debut as a prose writer by writing the memories of her childhood.

Her first book, “Niederungen” (”Nadirs”), which was completed in 1978, only appeared in 1982 after a bitter confrontation with the censorship at the communist time that seriously shortened her manuscript. Two years later the above-mentioned book was also published in the Federal Republic of Germany exactly as it had been written by the author.

Following her refusal to collaborate with the Romanian Communist 'Securitate', she was fired and sent to an enterprise where she subsequently worked as a translator. In 1987 she emigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany and settled in Berlin.